


Haunting of a Child

by Chyme



Series: Time waits for no Husband, Child, or Pawn [3]
Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Interspecies Adoption, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, M/M, Mission Fic, Same-Sex Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-06-26 11:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15662433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chyme/pseuds/Chyme
Summary: With Kai expecting Kenny to pop into existence sooner rather than later, Rook and Ben's relationship has unspoken issues simmering beneath it's surface. They don't talk about it though. Can't. Not when stopping biological warfare on a intergalactic scale takes first priority.





	1. First the Bomb Drops...

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a story set within the same timeline I wrote about in ‘Ghost of a Spouse.’ So I guess it’s either a sequel or a prequel, depending on your point of view of time-travel in general.
> 
> Also, may or may not be inspired by someone asking ages ago about how Coraline fuctions within the family unit I briefly mentioned in 'Ghost of a Spouse.' This...is not that exploration. Though I may do a tiny bit of it towards the end.

 

A small galaxy, uncluttered by ships or technology, lies in the outer reaches of the Hospilltonallian System. Eight small worlds circulate a slightly larger gold star, three of which play host to life, life which walks and plays and chatters in approximately sixty different languages, only fifteen of which are routinely translated across all the Plumber’s badges.

And then one day, a ship, black and gleaming, as though to disguise itself between the gaps of space their star cannot illuminate, slides out into their midst. Two worlds do not notice. One does. Their version of NASA runs tests, translation frequencies, fine-tunes their radio. But nothing, not a hint of a greeting escapes the gleaming black ship that waits. And then, out in the cold reaches of space, the hatch opens, low and smooth.

And out drops a bomb. It explodes, a fierce gold light dropping out into their centre of their galaxy to roar out like a candle flame, before it flickers and fades, drowned out by the vast darkness that allows it to go mostly unnoticed. The concussive blast it pushes out is small, failing to touch any planet within its radius; but the purple rings of light that spring out after the gold fades, glimmer and fall like fireworks in the sky. Much like rain, they dive through the atmosphere of multiple worlds.

And that is when things begin.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

‘Take care.’

A shadow on his skin, the fur as soft as always, and it treks over his fingers and crosses over onto his palm. Ben lets it slide down and gives the blue hand there a fellow squeeze.

‘What, no fist-bump for the road?’ he teases.

But Rook looks at him tired and unafraid.

‘There is Corrodium down there,’ he pronounces, and the familiar roll of his voice makes it sound as though he’s referring to nothing more than a chocolate bar. ‘You and I both know that humans do not end up...looking their best after being exposed to such a mineral.’

Ben smiles, fights the temptation to wink. ‘No monster make-over, got it.’

‘Yes,’ Rook intones gravely. ‘Save it for Halloween, please.’

Ben laughs and turns away, dragging his hand free. There’s the familiar pang when it leaves the fur, just enough to remind him that they’re not in bed together or within each other’s space in any way that can be called comfortable. The atmosphere here is all wrong, the ship around them sleek and gleaming with no welcome hues of green to touch the interior and remind them of Earth. Everything is silver, the buttons and keyboards jutting out of the workstations with a curved sharpness that reminds him of a dagger that’s lost its edge. The aliens wielding them however, have no hesitation in slamming their fingers into their shapes, pressing down as though they fear nothing more than a papercut in return.

Ben frowns. ‘I hate to break it to you, but maybe you should take your own advice. I still don’t trust these...whoever they are. They still haven’t given us their names, even though it’s been more than a decade since we saved their bacon.’

The nearest alien gives a casual sniff, rolling his shoulders slightly from under the harsh purple cuff that juts out like a ledge over them. He’s unwaveringly tall, nine feet to Rook’s six foot-something and intimidating to boot, claws and head-crest tipped with a turquoise-tinted gleam. The round disc stamped on his chest gives off the same glow, marred only by the black line of the maths symbol inside. A symbol that still, after all these years, remains untranslatable to them all.

‘The definitive name of our species contains at least eleven syllables alien to your primitive universe,’ he says, somehow managing to sound snooty without altering his tone. ‘It is far preferable to _all_ of us not to have to hear your barbarian tongues mangle that or the glory that is our individual...’

‘Names...’ Ben finishes dully. He’s half-tempted to add ‘because you’re actually called something embarrassing like squirrel-face, aren’t you?’ the way he would have done when he was sixteen but no, he’s too old for that. Mostly. Besides Rook is eyeing said ‘squirrel-face’ in a way that means he’s rapidly losing patience for the situation at hand. And a testy Rook is a fun Rook. Especially when it’s not being directed at him.

‘Do you not miss it?’ Rook asks, his voice deliberately passive. ‘Roaming your home dimension, one you have proclaimed to be unrestricted by the limits of time and space as we understand them? Because you have stayed _here_ in our ‘primitive universe’ for sixteen years.’

Ben lets out a low whistle. ‘He’s got a point there.’

The alien clenches his fist, shoulders bunching up beneath his odd purple ruff. ‘We have yet to reach our primary objective. And we have no need to answer to you.’

‘You do when you seek the help of the primary law-enforcement agency of this universe,’ Rook says grimly. His arms are now firmly crossed and he’s not exactly glowering.  But the only thing that rises to address the alien is his eyes and not his face, his neck staying firmly level with the symbol glowing in front of him. It’s the closest thing he’ll get to showing outright disrespect.

Besides, Ben notices, that purple robe, stream-lined shoulder ridges and glowy symbol may be intimidating, but Rook’s uniform is no slouch in that department either. The silver of his armoured collar blends in with the background with a titillating gleam, but the black of the armour beneath it, that surrounds the rest of him, pushes him out to the forefront of everything else, making the eye jump to attention straightaway.

...Or maybe Ben’s just biased.

‘You are here to help only yourselves,’ the alien says scornfully. ‘The Corroduim being harvested from this world, and injected into these weapons of mass destruction your kind likes to blather on about has no effect on us.’

‘No, just on the rest of the universe,’ Ben says grimly, hackles automatically rising at the uncaring tone of the alien’s voice. ‘But believe me, you _will_ start wanting to help us out when those weapons start getting unleashed on Earth, the planet you refuse to leave.’

The alien sniffs. ‘As I said, we have yet to fulfil our primary objective. You are here because we are the only ones with the means to build a ship impervious to the startling effects of this new bomb. And I must admit, judging by the radiation readings of this Hospiltollian System you have shared with us, that the way the intrinsic power of a dwarf star has been combined with distilled Corroduim and used to produce such a devastating effect across the ecosystems of a single galaxy is fascinating.’

‘Yeah,’ says Ben tightly. ‘Real fascinating.’

He’s seen it up close, first-hand. Burnt-out worlds that look as though nuclear war-far has torn across their surfaces, rendering their oceans grey and boiling and leaving acid-eaten craters in place of cities, snarling holes that gobble everything else down. The surviving trees and plants now black and skeletal, empty of leaves as though winter has approached and brushed over their forms. And as for the animals, the people...surprisingly, despite the destruction, they aren’t dead. No, now they wander over the purple desert their world has become, their forms twisted into black shapes more akin to the natural mud-like slick of the Lepoaians’ than whatever their biology previously dictated them to be. On the upside, such a mutation has allowed them to survive the torn landscape and rubble in a way Ben highly doubts their previous forms could have been able to withstand.

It’s been hours and a single galaxy has been wiped cleaned of it’s beautiful shape, three individual cultures and histories gone up in smoke. Ben’s hope is that they can turn what’s left of the people back to themselves if they can track down these bombs and their creators.

Rook sighs, turning away from the alien and his glare and taking hold of Ben by the shoulder in order to sheer him away. ‘I share your distaste,’ his husband says, his eyes looking just as grim as Ben feels. ‘But you do not have to place your trust in our hosts,’ Rook says. ‘Because while you will be down there, being a hero, I will be up here, watching them. Making sure they can do no harm.’

Ben stares at him. ‘Wow, Mr Rook –Tennyson. I get all tingly when you take charge like that.’

One of the other aliens nearby huddles further into his seat, his white face glaring down balefully at the keys he shoves down. They quiver there for a moment, before his claws slip off and start charging back across the buttons with a speed that screams of annoyance.

Ben gives a half-hearted shrug to the grumpy alien, and Rook stares at him, his expression looking even more tired than before.

‘Go. Azumuth gave you the code for the life form-lock, correct?’

Ben rolls his eyes. ‘Yes, yes. You don’t need to double-check everything. I can tie my own shoes.’

‘You have no laces,’ Rook tells him entirely straight-faced and Ben can’t help but let his eyes drop down to his feet for a second in order to double-check, before they sweep up to in order to see the smirk curl up and change Rook’s face, giving it some much-needed liveliness.

‘You...’ he pauses, unsure of which insult to use, before Rook laughs, pats him on the shoulder and says, very quietly with a teasing tweak to his mouth, ‘there, there.’

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Anur Khufos is a desert world, much like the ones Ben has had to stare at hours before and feel nothing but horror creep through his stomach at the sight. The difference is that Anur Khufos is still full of life. And it’s also the one place in the universe where Corroduim is produced.

So Ben trudges through blistering heat and storms that make the red sand swirl up and round the glowing curls of Corrodium he eyes distrustfully in the distance like mist. They arch out of the rusty gloom like jagged waves, their points and tips reminiscent of the ocean back home. Because of their existence, the desert does not take on the form of Earth’s; there are no sand dunes here, no centuries of storms and wind flurries to etch out ridges that on Earthrise sixty feet into the air. Instead the Corrodium pokes on through, dividing and driving the wind into smaller currents that sweep around and away, their multiple mirror-like surfaces being braised with the red dust ,the purple gleam still shining on through.

Ben’s legs drag and sweep, the bandages from his Snare-Oh form weaving forwards to clutch at the outline of one of them, leading him like a harness to it’s shape. He breathes as the sun beats down, the sand whistling as the wind flings it carelessly through all the gap his bandages leak through.

He’s beginning to realise why so many Thep Khufans emigrate to Scout’s world.

Already he can make out the patchwork shapes of their housing up ahead, bulbous shadows that are cut and thrust directly beneath the overhanging curls of the Corrodium. But on braving the metres between them, he realises how pitifully small they are, the sand distorting their shadows so that  on forcing his feet across each dark blur that tries to paint their shape as large, he is left disappointed, confronted with igloo-like hovels where each brick, crystallised solid, seems to crumble under his gaze. They’re red, baked by heat, sand fashioned and hardened into glass; there’s an odd gleam that passes over them, a shimmer that shines like ice.

Welcome to the neighbourhood, he thinks and pauses, offering his hand up in a hesitant wave as a set of purple eyes peer curiously from the arch-like gap on the dome furthest away. There’s no movement from the others, except for a thin sweep of noise, of something that shuffles and cracks like paper crinkling and pulling free.

But the owner of the curious eyes is not quite as frightened as her neighbour. She pulls herself out into the light.

‘Are you parched?’ she asks and Ben winces inwardly. The bandages of her body are torn and dirtied with red smears, of sand turned halfway into mud. Her dress, barely white, is short and ragged, the sleeves falling down to land heavily on her arms and her legs are bare. There is no hint of gold falling down, around and into her face, no fancy headdress to announce the Egyptian-like fashion style her species tend to favour. Just a burnished circlet of what looks to be, but probably isn’t, copper, a cat-like slant to the centre, with the ends curling back like a headband.

‘I could do with a drop,’ he says, realising, with some surprise, that it is true. He has never fastened himself within Snare-oh’s form long enough to fee anything like hunger or thirst. But here he is, trapped by the Life-Form lock and craving relief.

Her fingers fly out in a curiously human-like gesture, beckoning, and he follows, straight into the welcoming dark.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

There’s a baby in the basket by his feet. At least he thinks so. He stares down into the plaited weave of reeds, ones that creak and crack as he places his fingers over their rock-like edges and peers closer. A small ball of wrapped bandages stares up at him, their outer edges worn and torn loose and they wave above a set of loose, floppy, tentacles. Except, no, they’re bandages too but bigger, and lacking any definite humanoid shape.

‘One would think that you’d never have seen a baby before,’ his host remarks wryly, her fingers escaping into a flickering ripple that wipes across the pot of water she offers him to brush away a few smudges of dirt.

‘Thank you,’ Ben says, trying to imitate Rook but unable to tear his eyes away from the flopped-over swaddle of bandage in the basket. He can make out eyes now, purple and set into the slightly darkened cracks the spaces between the bandages let escape. ‘And err, no, I guess I haven’t. Not many kids where I’m from.’

Well. Thep Khufan ones anyway.

The adult one in front of him stares at him. ‘She’s experimenting,’ she says finally, her tone sounding slightly incredulous. ‘All babies do. She’s finally detached from me and has bandages of her own and the freedom to use them; so it’s all very exciting for her. She’ll settle into a more normal form over the following months, as she sees that she can’t really crawl around and hold things as a limpid shape or ball. That’s why I’m making more of an effort to stay...restricted in my usual form. If she starts copying me it will makes this phase end faster.’

‘Oh,’ says Ben. What else can he really say to that? He pauses. ‘Notice anything unusual around here?’ he asks as casually as possible.

She gives him a look. ‘Apart from the outsiders coming to tear down parts of our home? No. Nothing much.’

Ben’s grip tightens on the pot, enough for the water to slosh up against the side slightly. ‘Show me,’ he manages.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Every dune looks the same to Ben. His Thep Khufan eyes offer no new insights into the way the grains of sand slip and slide together, no way to tell one mound from another. The ones set on the face of his new friend, who has given her name as Nailah, however, are narrowing upon recognition of each new one.

‘Sixteen...seventeen...’ she counts under her breath and Ben feels himself knocked sideways by the thought that it isn’t so much recognition that plays through her eyes, but focus and concentration on the numbers she has fine-tuned into her memory.

‘Ah,’ she says happily. ‘And now we go left for fifty-six dunes.’

‘Don’t suppose you have GPS down here?’ Ben asks wryly.

‘I assume that acronym is a name for some sort of technology?’ Nailah asks without turning her head to face him. ‘No. I hear of things, from those who occasionally go off world, or attempt to start another life somewhere else and end up back here. But only the elite can afford spaceships or manage to pay the tolling stations that grant them access to climb the large cobwebs that link all the worlds in this solar system together. Unlike us, their ancestors were fortunate enough to build their home over the areas of our planet rich in metal, so they actually have things that outsiders want, things to bather with.’

Ben frowns. ‘Is that something a lot of you want?’ he asks. ‘To get out of here? What if some outsider was willing to give you a lift? Would you take it?’

She freezes. But her head still refuses to swing round to him, her eyes still locked on the rise and fall of sand. ‘The sand and sky is all I have ever known. And the generosity of someone who comes from beyond those things? Not something I can trust.’

‘That’s not always a good way to live,’ Ben tells her. ‘Taking chances, seeing something other than this sand and sky...isn’t that something that you’ld be interested in having your daughter see?’

She goes silent. Then off then her body collapses in on itself, slithering out into a serpent-like shape, leaving only her head attached. And, much like the vipers Ben’s seen in nature documentaries, travelling across the sand, her long legless body half-leaps, half-sweeps up the sand dune, leaving only singular crescent-moon curves in the sand behind her, one half of her body acting as a step to pull the rest of her up. It’s efficient Ben notes as he forces himself to copy her; the heat of the sand barely bites into the slender line of the stomach that now travels down underneath all of him.

‘I don’t know,’ she tells him, as he catches up to her. ‘If I am lucky, all that I have ever known will be passed down to my daughter. And that will be enough to keep her alive. What more can a parent ask for?’

Ben has not got a ready answer. He is not a parent, not yet. That is something due to change, soon, very soon. He still remembers the dull look in the eyes of someone who was meant to come from him and Kai, the birth date the boy had offered up though it were step one for producing cookie-dough instead of a human being. He hasn’t forgotten that look, he’s offered up his genetic material and so has Kai, to Azumuth, as well as the single strand of hair from Kenny that Rook had thoughtfully snagged before the kid was dragged out of view by the timeline seeking to reset itself. None of them have forgotten, and Azumuth has been at work comparing and contrasting the DNA lodged in Kenny hair to the multiple combinations he’s created out of the samples he and Kai have donated. And, well. There may or may not be a real-life test-tube baby bursting into existence any day now.

And it’s subtle. But Rook has been taking more time out to help his sisters nurse their children, helping them collect grains and flowers amongst the rut and grit of paths on Revonnah. He’s so fond and gentle, letting the girls paste crowns of white flowers against his scalp and letting the boys run eager fingers over the little knick-knacks and gadgets he keeps in his pockets. It makes something in Ben warm at the sight. And feel terribly sad. Because he can’t give Rook that. Can’t offer up the same lively atmosphere, the same shrill squeals of small people who constantly need something, some scrap of attention, in their home. No, their home is full of jokes and warm beer, fruity wine after a hard mission and Sumo Slammer memorabilia lining the shelves. No _real_ toys, no clutter and half-chewed blankets to stain their admittedly cool-looking pad.

But if Kenny gets here, if he’s really here, to share between him and Kai, then how will Rook feel looking down into some remnant of Ben that contains nothing of him, his husband?

Ben has never been brave enough to ask the question. But he should. He will. ...right after this mission gets done with. No sooner than he thinks this, then he and his Thep Khufan friend break out into a wide dip in the dessert, great grey cracks running through the hardened sand that spills out, brown and craggy, into makeshift rock. There are holes, great chunks in the landscape where the Corroduim has been ripped out by the roots. A machine, similar but a lot smaller to that strange, jutting contraption Dr Psychobos built on Revonnah so long ago, reaches out half-heartedly into the sky, the pulsing light from a dwarf star lodged into the circular silver clap right in the very centre.

Ben watches as the familiar hulking form of Dr Viktor takes up a set of black tweezers, one glittery and shot through with tiny pinpricks of light, like tiny jewelled stars set into their frame, and...picks out some of that shining light. It’s odd, watching it happen, seeing a part of the dwarf star melt into the hold like molten glass and drip light before it’s torn away, part of the gold still snaking out as though to mingle and reform with its original self. But Viktor rather ruthlessly slams it back down into a see-through container of some kind, not glass, but close. A container containing tiny black amethysts, chopped and sullen, little specks of Corroduim.

Ben’s seen enough. He bursts forward, his snake-like shape instantly re-coiling into something humanoid.

‘Oi, Frankenstein!’

Viktor jolts a little in surprise, but he doesn’t turn, not completely. No, only his head gives a small shake, the edge of a satisfied smile on his face.

‘Ah, Mr Tennyson. I wondered when you’d show.’

Ben’s bandages race outwards in a sweeping coil, wrestling Viktor’s arms to his side and carefully catching the containers as it jolts out the Doctor’s large grey hand.

‘That’s not my name, anymore,’ he says stoutly. ‘Not completely, not for _years_. I’m married now, haven’t you heard?’

Viktor sighs. ‘Congratulations. But you should still kill me, you know,’ he remarks. ‘It’s always been a stupid fallibility of yours; the refusal to kill enemies who will only make trouble for you later on.’

Ben is disturbed by how passive Viktor is being. But there’s no time to wonder. Only time to gasp as something as black and shiny as the tweezers Viktor has been sprouting, suddenly slams though his stomach. His gaze drifts down, bandages uncoiling from Viktor’s form, drifting and falling loose like ripped plant stems as Ben’s eyes find a dagger laced with stars sprouting from his mid-section. It _hurts_ which is strange, given that he’s a Thep Khufan now. They don’t hurt like this, no matter how their body is sliced and diced.

His head turns, to see his new Thep Khufan friend’s body is reforming, the large hole in her chest shivering down into a small pinprick, from where she has presumably plucked out the dagger she has been hiding.

‘Like it?’ she asks coolly. ‘It’s a copy of the ones forged by the Celestialsapians themselves. I told you before that only the elite of us can barter. But I said nothing about how the poorest of us can steal.’

Viktor sighs again and before darkness claims him, Ben has enough time to draw back his head and see the tiny slant of an eye-like device lodged inside a batwing just jutting out of the corner of his vision as Viktor turns round fully, the mind-control projectile of a Vladat on his forehead.

‘See, Tennyson? Like I said: trouble.’

 


	2. And then it Bursts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Corroduim is a bad, bad thing, guys. At least, if you don;t happen to be one of the three or four 'Halloween monster' species.

 

Rook’s finger taps down, right into the dip above his elbow. His arms are still crossed and this movement, this idle shift of finger against sleek armour, is all he will allow himself to do. He has always been better at sitting still than Ben, better at holding himself back from an impulsive, stupid action.

...And it has nothing to do with the fact that Ben teases him, likes to compare him to a big cat tapped in a zoo enclosure on the few, _few_ occasions he has allowed worry to overtake him and make him pace.

Rook narrows his eyes at the aliens hovering over the keyboard, sighs, and grimly reaches up with his rebellious finger to feign flicking lint from his ear. With a casual sweep, the ear bud lodged inside, painted a pale periwinkle to blend in with the surrounding wisps of fur, detects the motion and smoothly switches itself on with a faint whine. He’s particularly proud of this new piece. For months, _months_ he has offered money and reworked new trading treaties in order to glean information from traveling merchants and nomadic sages, to get them to share their knowledge of all the rougher, regional dialects that none of the linguists have ever bothered to study and work translations for. He’s built algorithms and consulted with professors of phonology in order to  create the perfect translating program, one that will hook into all the words being spoken and tear them apart, rebuilding them into patterns of possible sentences based on all the new data he has gathered.

 _‘Bomb explode!’_ his creation practically sings into his ear. _‘_ Much wonder. _Much joy!_ We find, search over.’

Rook frowns. His program is still in the beta stage and he doubts it will ever unveil all the fuller subtleties of a language spoken by transdimensional beings such as these aliens have always claimed to be.

‘Always want dwarf star,’ hisses Squirrel Face. ‘Cannot part from Plumbers. Cannot take gadget from Clyde Five.’

Rook’s frown deepens. It seems these aliens are not above thievery. And it does disturb him, that their appreciation for weaponry runs deeper than their earlier expressed interest in the way these new bombs can be constructed from materials previously thought to be incompetable.

‘Bomb can change home galaxy. Wipe all out who are unclean.’

Rook’s brow raises. Oh good. They’ve come here, to his home universe to search for new way to either win a war or commit a genocide.

‘Efficient way. Good loophole. Does not kill. High Court cannot act.’

Rook fights down the growl in his throat. Of course. The bomb does not specifically kill the living things that come into contact with it’s radiating wave, but seeks to alter them at the genetic level. It is a form of death, for the unfortunate individuals it touches, but it does not put an end to their physical existence. Perhaps that is indeed enough of a loophole to prevent whatever ‘High Court’ in their home dimension from acting.

They, including Rook, all jump as a high-pitched whine shears the air in two. He curses, fighting the instinctual need to both cover his ears and rip his new gadget out at the same time, before the noise cuts out and he blinks, able to suddenly think again. Enough to realise that the noise has escaped from the transmissions monitor to his right.

The aliens smoothly sweep out from their little huddle, glowering at the monitor all the while. And unlike a human radio, there are no knobs to twist, no frequencies to alter. Only a button to tap, and a holograph to rise out in an ethereal blue glow, elongating itself into a thin square. But not too thin, unfortunately to block out the shape of Dr Viktor’s face.

Rook sighs and narrows his eyes. ‘Hello _Doctor.’_ He stresses the word with all the condensation he can muster; any respect for whatever title this man has earned has been thoroughly smashed on viewing the destruction he has so obviously has a hand in playing with.

A grimace twists Viktor’s face, even more so than usual; Rook can see a sewn-up tear across his cheek bulge at the seams, a gristly brown smear of rotted muscle peering through for a brief second.

‘Hello. Though I cannot remember your name, I certainly remember _you._ ’

Rook laughs, low and hard. ‘Without any real pleasure, I hope.’

‘You would be correct,’ Viktor replies grudgingly. Then he winces, a strain crossing over his face, just enough for him to lower his face and breathe before he brings it back up to address the projector again. But not before Rook manages to catch sight of the familiar headpiece he’s sporting, the curved blades of it’s wing-like spurs drawing a quick, blurred black knife across the screen.

‘I have something of yours,’ Viktor says. ‘Though it is perhaps more accurate to call him a mutual acquaintance.’

He steps back, just enough to show the blurred grains of sand behind him, the endless sprawl of it, coated with what looks to be the torn shreds of a unrolled toilet roll. Rook’s heart grows cold at the scraps of familiar cloth he sees slumped to the side, the reminder of Snare-oh’s outfit.

‘Ben!’

‘Indeed,’ drawls Viktor shooting back into the frame again to cover Rook’s view of the pitiful sight. But before the Doctor can utter another word, Rook charges forwards, his shoulders ruthlessly clashing and pushing back against the arms of the aliens around him. They protest, but their flesh is no match for the glancing steel bite of his armoured collar, and though they are taller, the muscle of their chest speak only of their work as technicians and explorations who tend to stay seated at their jobs. And Rook’s? Well, his does not.

‘Where is he?’ he demands, a low throb in his voice. His hand itches for a gun, even though he knows that leveling a muzzle at a holograph would be far from helpful at present. Even so, the urge is still there.

Viktor grins. ‘Dead. Of course. Why else did you think I would show him literally lying in pieces. R.I.P, or I guess simply RIPPED into pieces, wouldn’t you say? A fitting elegy for someone so in love with such stupid puns.’

Rook shakes his head. ‘No. If he were dead, those bandages would be withered brown tatters. And you have not shown me his headpiece. A Thep Khufan is only truly dead when you shatter that.’ He pauses, closing his eyes to steel himself. And then they flash open. ‘So I will ask you again. Where. Is. **_He?_** ’

The last word slips out as a growl and the alien nearest to him shuffles uncomfortably. But Rook is so far beyond caring about that, as his hands automatically reach out to thud down on the corner panel, to support him and help form a bridge over the shadowed gap below, all of his weight pressed forward on his palms to help him hunch forwards, to take all the space so that Viktor has no choice but to stare into his face.

 ‘You sure you want him back?’ the Transylian asks after a moment. ‘Because it will cost you.’

‘What do you want?’ Rook grits out.

Viktor laughs lowly. ‘It is not what I want,’ he mutters, ‘but what my new boss wants that you should be worried about. And he wants it all, every world that travels around a sun to be corrupted, dark, full of things that won’t fight back when he drains them of their remaining life.’

Rook breathes. ‘So Lord Transyl got out then,’ he muses. ‘How?’

Viktor laughs grimly. ‘We should have condemned him to extinction along with the rest of his race. But we didn’t. And apparently, a lone asteroid, knocked out of its usual orbit by a kid taking daddy’s spaceship for a joyride, provided enough shadow, enough cover, for him to wrestle his way free. As to how he found his way down to Anur Transyl? I guess ruthless determination. His skin was blistered enough to be falling off him like a snake when he first landed. But after a few feedings, he was more than strong enough to make puppets out of all of us.’

He breaks into his monologue to grin emptily. ‘Lucky for me, though, that my brain was still useful enough to serve a purpose. After what he did to Crüjo and Kuphulu, I had more than enough motivation to work on a solution to his demand to cover the universe in darkness. Between you and me, I think his dance round our sun has made him a little clingy. Even luckier for me then, that only I can work here, under the sun.’

‘So you wish to negotiate,’ Rook says coolly, tapping his fingers against the panel idly.

‘I knew someone would come,’ Viktor says smugly. ‘And imagine how unsurprised I was to see Ben Tennyson appear.’

‘That is not his name,’ Rook says automatically. ‘Not his full one at any rate.’

Viktor screws his face up. ‘Oh. He said something about that. I thought male humans didn’t change their family name when they took up a new bride?’

‘That is indeed the norm,’ Rook says. ‘But it is far from being the only option out there.’

‘Well,’ says Viktor. ‘Either way, one of you or even his wife can come down here and get this filthy-’ he grimaces, fighting to tug his hand upwards, into the light, presumably to point at the thing covering his forehead. He loses the battle ultimately, his fingers only managing a twitch before falling to his side with a loose thump. ‘Well. You get the picture.’

The holograph cuts out with a click.

‘Yes,’ Rook says coldly to no one in particular. ‘His husband does.’

 

\-------------------------- 

 

If Max were here, or Gwendolyn or Kevin, they would be trying to talk him out of it, trying to come up with a better plan. Or at least, they would have more options, more ways to save Ben, more _powers_ at their disposal; Gwendolyn would be offering up some runes or muttering a few spells of protection for him, for example. And Kevin could probably absorb the material of the ship and walk down there with a far greater chance of survival than a creature of flesh and blood could. But Rook doesn’t have what they have. What he does however, _have_ , is  a bunch of aliens giving him cold looks.

‘Foolish,’ murmurs one.

‘Brainless,’ adds another.

‘He is a primitive being,’ Squirrel Face pronounces with an overbearing certainty. ‘What more did you expect?’

‘Thank you for the vote of confidence,’ Rook says dryly. He slips his fingers tighter into the black gloves of the radiation suit.

‘A temporary measure,’ Squirrel face assures, him, not quite resisting the urge to poke a claw against the pale green lining of the rest of the suit, or lean closer to peer into the small transparent helmet Rook squeezes around his head. ‘There is a reason you did not accompany your friend-’

‘Husband,’ Rook corrects curtly. He’s been doing this a lot these days, whenever someone uses that word. ‘Partner’ he can tolerate. ‘Friend’ especially when Ben is so close to creating a child with a mere acquaintance, he cannot abide.

‘Quite.’ Squirrel face pauses. ‘Against a simple lump of Corroduim, this suit would be sufficient. Against a planet filled with such a material, you will last less than six clicks. You, as you are now, are not long for this world.’

And neither will be Ben, unless I reunite his headpiece with the rest of him, Rook thinks. But instead he stares back into the cool blue eyes above him.

‘Goodbye,’ he says smoothly, and resisting the urge to smash his fist on the teleporter module, he smoothly passes his palm over it instead. So that with one long beam of green energy, he is gone.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Thankfully, they do not drop him off far from the location Viktor is at. Rook sinks into sand, his boots weighing him down and with a grunt, starts the tired-old pattern of tracking down a living target. Unlike Ben, this ability of his is not limited to wooded areas and other places where the environment would not look of place at a Earthern campsite. His eyes trace the skyline and compare dune to dune, a swift smile crossing his face when he discovers the indents that are too obviously a part of a pattern to be wind-scored and naturally occurring. Thankfully, he has acted quickly enough to arrive before the breeze batters and beats the tracks down to nothing, though he does pause to frown down at the second, lighter set of prints that pass over and intertwine with Ben’s. A local guide presumably; very sensible of his partner.

It takes work to catch up to them though, the heat beating down, producing a near sizzle with every step. The only relief is the shadows the spectres of Corroduim throw out, and though the dip in temperature is welcome, Rook can’t help but feel an apprehensive chill in his stomach at the sighting of each new one. Gradually, as he travels, he feels his stomach clench harder, and with more heat, in a move that is not quite born of his emotive state, and he finds himself gritting his teeth, fighting back the urge to pause and stretch. Were there just a few scraps of this ghoulish purple gem, instead of entire towers and peaks, this suit would serve him well. As it is...well. Time is of the essence.

One step after another, he pushes himself up through sand that falls around him and attempts to push him back with each deeper footstep he cuts out of the side of the dune. He barely pauses when the track transform from footsteps into a set of curved slices, as though something has whipped across the surface. This is the first time he has had to track Ben on foot and he is well used to the way the trails his husband leaves behind him change rapidly from minute to minute, even in the bathroom at home. Waking up to see the smudged webbed trail of Grey Matter’s fingerprints against the mirror above the sink cease to be novelty, especially when they have presumably been used to fix the wiring of the shaver nearby, one still spitting out the odd hair from where Ben has once again, forgotten to switch it off.

With a grunt Rook pushes himself up over the latest dune and pauses at the grey colour the sand gradually shifts down into. Below him, waiting are the scraps of his husband, Dr Viktor and presumably, the person who guided Ben out here. The person, who has not been similarly whittled down into pieces the way Ben has and also looks to be in no way restrained. Rook narrows his eyes. And starts to walk down. As he does so, he can’t help but wrinkle his nose at the way Ben’s bandages have been left to flutter and spill across the ground. One flaps and catches him across the leg and he gingerly leans down and peels it off, pulling it up to wrap it round his arm like a tourniquet instead. He frowns at the pale cracks he can see spreading through it, at how dry and flaking it feels even through the dense material of his gloves, as though transforming into plaster.

‘Strange,’ he says, his voice muffled through the suit. ‘How powerful a dwarf star is, and how compressed it becomes. And yet it contains none of that same solar flare that enables life to flourish on rocks circulating other stars out there. It is as though it can only push out power and nothing else.’

‘Is this a philosophy lesson?’ Viktor asks. ‘Because I _am_ a scientist. What makes you think I would ever want to listen to your ridiculous bleats?'

Rook offers him a crooked smile, his eyes never quite leaving the female Thep Khufan plastered to his side, who watches him through a narrowed purple gaze.

‘I too, am familiar with science.’ He steps forward, shaking off the small tremble that seems to infect his foot, before bringing his hand up to show a small black gadget. ‘This is not a weapon,’ he announces, exposing it with a tiny, tremulous, flourish and tilting it from side to side as though to show that there are no hidden blades or Swiss army knives. ‘Though I will admit to cannibalising  part of a Proto-Tool to get it. It stores...well. Any kind of energy. And I have set it to store the solar flares from the sun above our heads for the last few minutes now.’ He smiles.

‘That will not be enough to get this abomination off me,’ growls Viktor. ‘If it were, it would have fallen off long before now.’

‘True,’ Rook acknowledges. ‘It might if the Vladat who spat it out were here, but well. He is not. I guess I will have to take it out on you then.’

And with one shaking step forward, he squeezes the black box and shoves it up against Viktor’s eye. Bright piercing white light pours out and Viktor falls back with a yell, his hand clawing at his now smoking eye socket. Rook spins, only to be caught up in a weave of white bandages, the female Thep Khufan’s arms outstretching and breaking into the familiar coil of a python around him.

His smile crooks, thin and mean. ‘Are you sure you want to get that close?’ he asks idly. ‘I am not quite myself anymore.’ He’s hardly finished the sentence before he unclenches his fist and allows it to slam up. The material around it cracks open like an egg and his arm breaks out of the suit, black and clawed, purple liquid oozing from between the gaps of his fingers. There is no fur, only clumps of fine wire arranged like the lumpy coat of a haggard wolf and Rook grimaces at the sensation, even though he can feel more of these strands erupting along the line of his throat. The suit is slowing the transformation, but barely.

But still, this arm is strong enough to rip through the lines of the Thep Khufan hastily trying to smother him and Rook growls, tearing past both paper and the panicked expression on her face, as his new claws dig deep into the hollow inside of her. Because where else could they possibly be hiding Ben's alien headpiece?

‘Viktor has no pockets,’ he pants. ‘But you, a Thep Khufan are one, large, living one.’

His claws seize hold of something cool and metallic, and he gentles his grip automatically, letting his claws glide over and around the hooks of the headdress as carefully as he can. With a pop Snare-oh’s dark face pops out of his enemy and he stumbles back, his foot reaching up and slamming down on the burnished circlet that serves as the focal point for her mental energy. She flounders, bandages breaking down into tatters as his boot applies pressure, and he drags his eyes from her  with an effort in order to stare down into his husband’s face.

‘Ben!’

‘Wha-’ comes the sleepy rejoinder and Snare-oh’s green eyes flutter open into a weak green glow. ‘Five more minutes, Roo...oh, you’re here. Wait, you shouldn’t be _here!_ ’

Snare-oh’s eyes open, widening, his gaze now caught on the snarl on Rook’s face and the black crawling up onto his cheek, the rest of the suit starting to peel off his frame like cracked and dried mud. ‘Ah! And you should definitely _not_ be looking like _that!_ ’

‘I am sorry that I am not at my best,’ pants Rook but then he ducks, catching sight of the gleaming streak of silver and black that slams towards him out of Viktor’s fist.

‘Careful!’ Ben yelps. ‘It’s knock-off Celestialsapian stuff!’

‘Then it’s time for you to get to work,’ Rook growls. And he thrusts Ben’s head out, watching his husband, or at least the part of him still housing his spirit, sail through the air with a loud ‘WHOA’ to land with an undignified thump on a few of his old bandages. In front of his eyes, they quickly snake together and knot into a familiar shape.

 And now Rook no longer has to duck and weave alone. His husband is beside him in an instant, taking on the larger blows and letting his bandages pull apart and weave round the jabs and thrusts Viktor makes at them, holes appearing within his form moments before Viktor can even begin to try and carve them out.

So Rook pulls his head away and re-focuses his attention on the female Thep Khufan. He practically pounces as she tries to slither away, his legs now locked into a form more appropriate for Blitzwolfer, and down comes his malformed arm in response, tearing through her again, all force and no finesse. It is effortless, far more so than calling up the energy and focus needed for an advanced Revonnah-Kai technique like ‘Stone-Cutter’ and he can’t help but watch in satisfaction as she shivers and divides like a river beneath him.

This feeling is disrupted by a sharp jolt to the centre of his back, and he flies forward at the force of the kick; proof that Viktor is not entirely distracted by Ben. Rook tumbles and bites back a curse, almost cracking his head against a rock before the world suddenly softens at its edges and the strong wear and tear of paper is around and under him, lifting him into a thick cradle that smells of papyrus. He blinks, gaze turned away from the sand and sky and up, into the green concern of his husband’s Thep Khufan eyes.

‘Hey there, honey,’Ben says flippantly, his feathery fingers, nestling like the roll and ruffle of curling parchment over Rook’s monstrous shoulder. ‘You’re not looking so hot.’

‘ **Everything** is too hot,’ Rook stresses out, the pant hot and heavy in his voice and Ben’s eyes narrow to hear it.

‘Then I guess it’s time for everyone to cool off.’

He lets Rook roll down off his knees and into the sand before rising and crossing his arms, intoning a low line of numbers under his breath in a code he won’t even let Rook know.

‘Hazard-oh!’

Snare-oh’s bandages bulge out, becoming a little firmer and heavier to resemble iron rungs rather than paper strips, and their colour turns harsh, shining out like the red that captures the outsides of traditional Earth fire hydrants. And above the main body, the head-dress shifts, losing the gold sheen and wide curves, before it turns and shrinks, becoming caught into a shallower incline of Water Hazard’s hood.

The fusion shifts, arms stretching out, uncoiling as though the slide on a helter-shelter is splitting from the main tower that supports it. And water slides out, thick and heavy, pinning both Viktor and the Thep Khufan to the ground. They slather and roll, bandages from Ben’s former guide trying to snake out but instead the simply flop, wet, weighted down and unable to fling themselves forward. Ben marches over and with a quick flourish of him arms, binds Viktor’s arms and legs with the rest of her body.

‘Hang tight,’ he grunts. ‘And the same to you,’ he adds stomping over to Rook. ‘What were you thinking?’ he demands, his shape falling out of the fusion and reverting back to his Thep Khufan one as he shouts. ‘I’m the one that transforms! Not you!’

‘I don’t have much of a choice,’ Rook grunts, pain raking through his voice and Ben softens at the sound of the contraction, his bandages wrapping down and around the parts of Rook the suit will no longer cover.

‘C’mon, Blonko.Thep Khufan bandages can block out most of the radiation of these things. And I can halt the progress somewhat like this.’

‘Kinky,’ Rook manages to spit out as Ben cradles him close to his chest, bits and pieces of him now playing the part of the inured patient, as they become cloaked in the gauze that splits from Ben’s body.

Ben sighs at the joke instead of laughing. ‘Sure, babe,’ he says, no real pleasure lodged into his tone at all. ‘Whatever you say.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We see Rook become more relaxed and fond of colloquial elements of speech through the course of Omniverse. I can only imagine what decades on Earth next to Ben, have done to his personality.


	3. Into Radiation And Mutation

 

Ben’s abrupt bridal carry lasts only seconds. And then his eyes turn wide at seeing the mutation that creeps into Rook’s face, all in order to drag it down into a new, rough angle. Painfully, it bites into his muscles, and pushes down hard against one eye, and Rook grimaces, feeling as though his cheek is about to rot and slide off, before his sight is suddenly directed elsewhere, away from the red of the sand and the purple gleam of the Corroduim, as Ben’s chest opens, parting like a pair of theatre curtains, as he is unceremoniously thrust inside.

He grunts as the smell of parchment infuses his sense; nice, admittedly, in the same way the heat from a gold-lit page under sunlight feels comforting within the hand that holds it, but still, it does nothing to ease his irritation at the fact that Ben is refusing to drag their two prisoners along with him. The weight is all wrong in here for at start; he can hear no sliding thump to indicate that some of Ben’s bandages have traveled back to wrap around their trussed-up captives in order to drag them through the desert.

Though he will admit, the hot burn of pain that currently racks his body is taking up most of his concentration, and it is only with the lines of Snare-oh’s body sheltering his own, bracketing him in, that he can actually _think._ Dry and dusty as these tendrils encasing his body are, at least they bring relief, small, soothing, snatches of dull coolness running up his nerves from all the places they touch.

He sighs in the darkness; because come to think of it, he really doesn’t fancy whatever his next encounter with a mirror will reveal.

And still, cushioned by the musty yellow interior of Ben’s body, Rook flinches as the sun peeks through the cracks in the bandage seams, dabbing thin lines and rivers of gold into his sight, before bleeding into a sharp, angry-looking scarlet whenever Ben shifts and tries to tighten these bandages together, decreasing all these gaps to a minimum.

A near impossible task when moving, Rook thinks. And with the additional weight and the way _he_ must be stretching the natural thinness of a Thep Khufan’s stomach area…

‘Oh, don’t give me that look.’

Snare-oh’s voice reverberates down, and it is a weird experience to hear it echo from directly above, as though they are both trapped in a tight cave together.

‘Given my current condition, I cannot help but look at you,’ Rook manages. ‘And I very much doubt you can see _me_ right now, so as to what you are referring to, I am sure I have no idea.’

Ben snorts. ‘Don’t give me that. You’re all mopey because I’m not sparing the time to drag those other two trouble-makers back to the site our friendly benefactors can teleport us from. You know, instead of wearing myself thin and risk exposing you to more of this Corrodium forrest.’

Rook is silent. It is easy to forget sometimes, especially when caught in the throngs of an unwanted mutation, that his husband has taken just as much notice of his long-suffering facial expressions and twisted little sighs throughout the years, as he has done when mentally cataloguing each one of Ben’s defensive facial expressions and flippant insults.

‘Also,’ Ben says very dryly. ‘You are making me look fat. I might not be able to see _you_ , but your outline is definitely sticking out of me like a sore thumb.’

‘It is all muscle, I assure you,’ Rook replies, and despite the fact that yes, Ben is indeed right about not seeing him, Rook feels the brow over his undamaged eye rise smugly.

‘Urgh,’ Ben spits. ‘You’re impossible.’

The stamps of his feet smack down into the sand a little grumpily, and Rook is roughly jostled around for the next few dunes until Ben pauses.

‘Nearly there,’ he remarks and Rook determinedly ignores the smug under-bite to his tone. ‘We’ll get you fixed up asap, okay? But first, we’re better pick up a baby. The Mom turned out to be a little too stab-happy for my tastes, and I don’t think leaving the kid with a neighbour indefinitely is going to work out for the better.’

‘That is very thoughtful of you,’ Rook murmurs. ‘But, Ben? There is no cure for my condition. Not yet.’

‘That is not the sort of attitude I want from you, Mr Magister,’ Ben says a little too flippantly; and Rook frowns at the tone, at how light and airy it is, as though there are no serious emotions bubbling up from beneath it. ‘Besides, it’s too late to mope about it. If you didn’t want to end up losing your good looks, you should never have come down here in the first place!’

The last sentence comes out a little ragged, almost a shout. And Ben pauses.

‘Sorry,’ he says, a little quieter. ‘I’m just…mad. I’m grateful you came, but I’m still angry that you did it anyway, given what’s happening to you.’

Rook shifts; his new arm is a jagged, uncomfortable thing, that doesn’t quite line up with the rest of him. His legs even more so.

‘Ben,’ he says quietly, ‘you were in pieces. _Pieces._ Objectively, I knew you could survive for a little while. But I could not wait around, and simply hope for the best. It is not within me to do that.’

Ben groans. ‘So you ended up taking a page from my book. Well done!’

Rook smiles. ‘You should not be so surprised,’ he murmurs. ‘I have been reckless for years. It is just with you my side, any bout of recklessness I may show often pales in comparison.’

Ben snorts. ‘I’m not always by your side,’ he points out. ‘I work solo more often than not. I just asked you with me this time because…well. I needed someone I could trust with those-who-should-not-be-named peering over our shoulders.’

‘And you can,’ says Rook eagerly, feeling stupidly seventeen years old again as he does so. ‘You made the right decision.’

‘Sure,’ mutters Ben. ‘But let’s hope they haven’t been up to too much trouble while we’ve been gone, hmm?’

 

\-------------------------- 

 

The aliens have not been up to anything while they’ve been gone. Except stare rather moodily over a green tiled board and shake little scraps of luminescent paper at each other, apparently.

‘What are they doing?’ Ben asks, disturbed, gently unfurling Rook from his inner depths as he does so.

Rook spares a glance at the wiggling pile of white tentacles Ben appears to be holding in his free hand, before the aliens start bellowing and waving their arms at them in distinct shooing gestures. He peers closer with his one good eye at the bundle that is supposed to be a baby, catching a snapshot of purple peering back at him, agog with wonder, before the aliens crowd in, yanking on gleaming silver gloves and pulling at his distorted form.

‘Hey, hey, hey!’ Ben brushes them away with a casual sweep of his other arm, his Thep Khufan strength easily swatting them aside. ‘Easy there! You know, for a bunch of transdimensional beings, you don’t seem to be all that intelligent when dealing with an injured person!’

‘You are using the wrong verb,’ one of the aliens says, someone with an even thinner face than the one Ben used to dub ‘Squirrel face’ when he was younger. ‘ _Mutating_ is what he is doing, not simply being  injured.’

Ben’s face screws up. ‘It is possible to be both at once,’ he states coldly. ‘Now,’ he continues, extending his fingers into large, waving sheets that coil round all the surrounding aliens to keep them at bay, ‘where exactly are you trying to take him?’

The bundle of bandages, still clenched within Ben’s hand, spreads its extensions outwards like a set of feelers and hesitates, a soft cooing emitting from its depths. Then they bunch together, forming a width comparable to A3 sheets of paper and stretch upwards to knock Ben in the face like a battering ram. There’s no real force behind it; the feelers shudder and come apart within seconds, trembling weakly as though a faint breeze could rustle them apart.

Ben sighs. ‘Yeah. Sorry, kid, not now, okay?’

She’s trying to copy you, Rook realises, with an odd sort of humor passing through him. Then he is quickly jolted out of it by the words falling from the alien’s mouth.

‘We are taking him to our stasis pods. It is the only way to successfully stall the transformation. After all, there is no known cure, correct? And you will not allow us to simply throw him out of the airlock so...’ he trails off, claws twirling round each other in a gesture that most human would call ‘twiddling their thumbs.’

And Ben stares him down. ‘Yeah. There’s no cure, **yet** ,’ he heavily enunciates. And even the baby stops wiggling at the tight tone of his voice. ‘So let’s not go around murdering people, before we’ve done as much research as we can, hmm?’

Even Squirrel Face looks nonplussed at that.

But Ben’s eyes don’t leave the aliens or their movements, and his free hand, an inhuman as it may be for the time being, does all it can to remain attached to Rook’s side, before it’s finally, _finally_ parted from him, after he’s carried down corridor after corridor, by a shelf of floating glass. Rook watches as the fingers fall out of their solid shape, pressed out into the wispy thinness of paper to  escape the puff of smoke that surrounds him and he glances down to see his limbs aglow with a heady blue light. Briefly, he is reminded of their first meeting with the crew over a decade back, and how they confused them for eerie statues; and now it looks as though a similar fate is about to befall him.

Ben is blurry before his eyes, still thin and locked inside a shape he has never held close to him at night. And Rook has time to miss that familiarity, to wistfully wish for the life-form lock to fail one last time, before sleep catches him. And holds him still.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Ben is in the kitchen, flour licking it’s way up to his elbows, the white streaks escaping into his skin as he leans over, sleeves rolled back and brow furrowed. He peers down into a bowl far too big to cook up anything remotely healthy and Rook feels fondness touch him at the sight.

He feels an altogether different emotion stir as the green sweater he got Ben years ago, dips and tightens with the strain of holding itself steady over the wide muscular plain of Ben’s shoulders. And yet this strange urge to familiarise himself with Ben’s body, is not for anything sexual, but simply just for the sake of touching. And it _is_ strange because it not something born of spontaneity, but a feeling copied from memory, worn down into his brain in a way that feels unnatural.

It is probably the effect of the dream-like stance of the stasis-pod, he thinks. Most times, there is only heady darkness, an absence of time on the few occasions when he has been pressed into one of these trances. But this species, it appears have arranged their own...he pauses and with a smile touching his lips comes up with the phrase, ‘in-flight entertainment.’

‘What?’ Ben calls from over his shoulder. ‘Stop being so creepy. You don’t have to be a ninja around me.’

Rook feels a sense of unease; he is not aware of having spoken to this figment of Ben. And something tugs at him, some urgent warning that stirs and prods at his memory. Clearly, both thought and speech run in a haphazard line together here, the barrier between them incredibly thin. He will have to concentrate.

‘I am not creepy,’ he says slowly. The next second with a jolt, he is by Ben’s side, arms wrapped tightly round the other’s man middle; and he has no memory of the movement, of pressing himself into his husband’s space. And yet his voice trips out him, undisturbed and pleasant, as though nothing untoward has happened. ‘But I like trying to surprise you; you often pick up on my presence even when I actively try to hide. You are an interesting challenge to me.’

Ben’s eyebrow rises, thick and disbelieving. ‘It still pings on my Edward Cullen meter.’

This time Rook is allowed to act, to remember the motion of pushing himself forward to slide a kiss against Ben’s neck, to feel the tug of the human’s beard as he begins to pull away, before hesitating and leaving a tiny, teasing bite on the thick junction of a vein.

‘How insulting; I am a much more friendly type of vampire,’ he murmurs, feeling triumphant as the imaginary Ben stiffens, trying to fight back a laugh. ‘And I do not hunt down defenceless animals.’

Ben smiles. ‘You got that right. Me: defenceless? Pah!’ He peers back inside the bowl and Rook peers down with him, frowning at the gleaming ceramic interior and the lack of any crumbly food mixture inside.

‘Ben?’ he asks haltingly, his eyes running down over the flour-stained patches of his husband’s skin. ‘What are you making?’

Ben’s smile softens, deepens. ‘Our baby.’ He says it like it’s obvious, like Rook’s a fool for even thinking anything differently.

And suddenly Rook’s arms are not around Ben and he is on the other side of the table, stepping away, Ben’s warmth, his skin, suddenly repulsive.

‘What?’ he chokes out, hands tightening into fists on the wooden rim of the surface. And he hates it, the familiarity, the way the sun slants through the window and throws part of Ben’s face into gold light, the way it always does at this time of evening. For Earth is not home, **_Ben_** is. But right now, despite this familiar sight, he is impossibly alien to Rook. Alien and cold.

‘Our baby?’ Ben repeats, now looking puzzled. ‘Remember? We’re making one.’ He tilts the bowl, so Rook can see the inside, but to his eyes, it remains gleaming and ceramic, and utterly free of food. And for that matter, any kind of baby.

Rook closes his eyes, blocks out Ben’s face, and the view of their kitchen, and all the strange archaic chairs and table made of wood, stray knick-knacks of sentiment from Ben’s childhood home, despite the sleek technical gleam of the rest of their home. He opens his eyes and feels annoyance overtake him at the sight of the weird cat plates that decorate the highest cabinet shelf, spare strays from Sandra’s odd collection, all tabbies and tawdry-haired grey Persians. Rook has always hated them, and knows Ben hates them too. But still they stay, because Sandra loves them so, feels close to her son despite his high-celebrity status and lack of time in Bellwood, whenever she sees them still sitting there.

‘Ben,’ he says, hating his memory, his subconscious, this whole cruelly-crafted dream. ‘There is no baby. Not for us.’ 

He opens his eyes. Ben is still frowning. ‘There is,’ his husband insists. ‘He’s just not arrived yet. You have to be patient.’

‘No,’ Rook says lowly. ‘In this instance, I can’t.’ And then he is close to Ben, again, close enough to pick up dream-scent snatches of his aftershave and that bright, sharp human odor wafting underneath.

 _‘What do I smell like to Revonnahganders?’_ Ben had asked him once years ago, when they were teenagers, still accustomed to giddy make-outs in the back of Rook’s truck. The make-outs have not stopped of course, but the anxious fumbling has lessened, eased by years of practise and the certainty of knowing where it’s now okay to touch and be greeted by a moan instead of a yelp.

 _‘Like pollution,’_ Rook had answered him, smiling as Ben had huffed, offended. _‘A pollution of all my senses, tough, wiry and utterly inescapable. Like hot chocolate, run through with a shot of honey,’_ he had continued, catching Ben’s shoulder, before the other could turn away and lose himself in a sulk. _‘But I cannot speak for others of my kind.’_

Ben had only been slightly mollified. But now, right now, he is only confused. And it doesn’t fade, even as Rook’s hands suddenly switch themselves from his sides to that same lost expression, fitting themselves perfectly over human cheeks and the brown fuzz of a beard.

‘We will never have a baby that is born from the two of us,’ Rook says, finally speaking the words he has never clearly pressed out to his Ben, the real one free from his head. And then, he breathes out the ones he has repeated, time and time again, in the little quasi-arguments that have inhabited this room, and others in their home. ‘We could have tried to form a hybrid; the technology is out there. But our species, while more compatible than some, are still different enough to cause numerous health risks for any viable embryos. I researched for months. And the potential of sterility for any possible survivors...’ he hesitates. ‘I did not feel it would be fair. There is a chance our child would have had to have dealt with chronic pain for the rest of their natural lifespan, a lifespan that may have been shorter than ours as a result of our decision.

And I have discussed this with you, hashed out my reasoning.’ He stops, sighs, and strokes his thumbs down the side of Ben’s face.

‘But I have never fully unveiled my thoughts about Kenny. Perhaps I should have. I do not hate him. But I feel...resentful. That Kai is giving you something I cannot, and doing it so _easily_. It is...’ he hesitates, his mouth twitching in wry amusement at himself and the childish phrase that will now escape him. ‘It is not fair.’

Ben stares at him woodenly. And Rook realises, with a sharp thump of his heart, that maybe this Ben cannot give him an answer. His imagination has run dry; he has never even tried to formulate what Ben’s possible rejoinder to this might be.

Pain claws at him. And it is not entirely from the dream; Rook winces as one of his arms sharpens, lengthens into a gnarled black thing, more shadow than flesh, fur hanging off into spikes and quills, purple lay-lines running amok beneath their hairy barbs. Ben’s face lowers, yanked away from him by his sudden gain in height, his knees snapping backwards into a canine-like back-thrust that shapes so many hind limbs within that genus.

Is this what I am now? Rook thinks dizzyingly as Ben’s face distorts, swirling away into the kitchen lights which in turn blur and blend against the steel interior of the real room he now sees surrounding him. He cannot move, cannot speak, and frightening enough, his reflection is peering back at him from the grey-tinted walls, forty percent of his face shorn off into an inky blackness, all personality wiped from the facial muscles affected. And his eye, instead of the usual yellow glimmer he is used to seeing, stares back at him, wide, vacant and purple, the pupil barely a dot.

There is movement on the floor. Rook follows it, eager to be distracted from the ghastly visage in front of him but feels annoyance overtake him as the movement solidifies and becomes a creeping, crawling tendril that pulls out a small, knobbly body out from under a control console.

Rook stares down the Thep Khufan baby, who does indeed look a lot more like an actual baby now, even managing to pull the small details out that were missing before, like fingers and toes. There’s actually a face down there now, staring back up at him and now that she is not a constantly weaving blob of ribbons, he can catch sight of the headpiece that bites out against her forehead, with a thin depiction of two serpents knotted and joined at their tails arching up into a point above the centre of her forehead. Their jaws open to grasp at the corners of her forehead, out where maybe you would expect hair to overlap and each burn a burnished grey colour, like steel instead of silver.

Ben, thinks Rook, thoroughly exasperated. How have you managed to let a _baby_ outwit you? And then unease creeps up on him. Because where is his husband?

If he had the motor control for it, he would grimace. Movement catches his eye again as the child creeps closer, half crawling, half slithering as her legs fall away and arrange themselves into a sliding sheet of paper. She comes close enough to touch and stares up at him, squinting in that way that predates the urge to act on such open curiosity, a curiosity Rook has seen infect his own siblings growing up.

No, he wants to tell her. I am not a fit sight for a child to see.

Slowly her right arm unravels and reforms into a crooked claw-shearing monstrosity, a mirror image for the appendage attached to his shoulder. And then she hits his shin lightly with it. A dull clank echoes out around the chamber. And Rook feels nothing. It is as though she is hitting a glass bottle with a stick.

The door to the outside corridor whooshes open and a shadow falls out across the space it reveals. Rook’s eyes catch hold of one of the crystal aliens and with one smooth movement, the being comes in and waves a hand at the baby, as though trying to shoo a cat. She stares at him non-comprehendingly. So he grunts, and then, head briefly turning to Rook, aims a kick at her side.

She lets out a squeak and rolls over, body instantly flapping loose and Rook feels rage curl in his stomach. The alien tilts his head at Rook and then, carefully, as though observing a bug, his robes fly out again and a quick flash of white land in the baby’s side.

She unravels across the floor like toilet paper. Lights across the other side of the room flash, but Rook doesn’t care. He is growling in an awful, undignified way, louder and more animalistic than any Revonnahgander throat has ever produced, vocal cords throbbing when they should be frozen. Slathers of what looks to be blue ice falls and shatters from his form, but the alien in front of him, looks not at all panicked.

‘Ahhhh,’ it breathes, a distinct accent now creeping into its breath. ‘I was right. Not only does it create easy pickings. Mixed with other ingredients, it actually produces soldiers worthy of my time.’

It leans forward, all the better to sneer, despite the lack of a mouth and Rook reaches out and grabs it round the neck. Some part of him is yelling, wanting to pull back, but it quickly becomes lost under the haze of red anger.

‘Mmm,’ it murmurs, low and smooth and if he were thinking clearly, Rook would be disturbed at how pleased it sounded, even with the tight grip of his claws raking lines of fine grey across the throat, small pebble-like grit falling away from beneath them like wall plaster. ‘I was like you once. So quick to hunger, so quick to act. I still am, of course. But I have learnt...patience. And the value of subterfuge.’

Rook’s claws tighten, enough to shatter the holo-mask perched over the grim face of the Vladat Lord Transyl.

Lord Transyl does not smile. He has never needed to, not in all the centuries he has feasted. And yet, some animal impulse in Room recognises he is pleased.

‘Now,’ Lord Transyl says, mouth opening wide in order to stab Rook’s forehead with something small and black and painfully familiar. ‘Listen closely, minion...’

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Ben is weirded out. He’s dragged himself back over the planet to Viktor and Miss I’m-no-more-than-a-friendly-tour-guide.

‘Now,’ he demands, paper hands on paper hips, ‘spill. What’s Dracula’s master plan?’

Nailah bursts out laughing. ‘Ahahahaha! That’s such a human gesture!’

Ben deflates. The truth in her words stings. Without elbows, his arms curve round like the handles of a vase, which does tend to take away all the angry edges and angles to a traditional hands-on-hips gesture. Maybe he should have crossed them instead.

‘I’m not human right now,’ he reminds her tersely. ‘So I suggest you start talking.’

Viktor sighs. Unlike other villains Ben has faced, he does not jeer, does not ask ‘or else what?’ in an annoying tone of voice. But then again, while he is aware than Ben does not kill, he is also highly aware than the punishments or prisons Ben devises for them, sometimes on the fly, can be a form of living death. He’s experienced at least one for himself.

Besides...it’s no secret to the rest of the Universe what has become of Vilgax. Stripped of his limbs, bloated and barely alive, he swims in the cylinder tank Ben has reserved for him in one of the top floors of his watch tower. A warning lesson to all, of what happens when you cross certain lines.

So Viktor stares at Ben, not a muscle twitching in his jaw and says, ‘I told your _partner._ What that glutton wants is a mindless hoard of free meat that will not run and endless darkness, so he can feasts whenever he please, no matter what world he travels to.’

Ben does not twitch at the cold, sharp twist Viktor gives the word ‘partner.’ He has heard worse.

‘My husband,’ he says tightly, trying hard not to let the burr in his throat catch on the word, ‘has been a little preoccupied lately. So let’s have a recap, shall we?’

 The Thep Khufan presses her head forward. ‘Well, _I_ simply wanted a way off this Anubis-infested rock. And the vampire offered it to me.’

‘Just like that?’ Ben asks skeptically. ‘Without turning you into a mind-controlled slave? That doesn’t sound like the Lord Transyl we all know and love.’

He spares a glance at Viktor’s bat-winged eyeball, still staring gormlessly out from its place on his forehead.  ‘Not at all.’

Viktor stares moodily into the distance, the effect ruined somewhat by the spike of the small wings cutting out over the wrinkled surface of his skin. ‘The Corrodium around here acts as a barrier for her species. They are born here, live with its radiation every day. With so much of it here, there is an...interference with the subsonic mental array that Lord Transyl’s Corrupturas’ send out. It would be a different story were we not on Anur Khufos.’

Good to know, Ben thinks.

The Thep Khufan huffs, thumping her bandaged-together feet against the sand impatiently, to force out little furrows beneath. ‘Like I ever really believed he was offering me a ticket out of here from the kindness of his heart! I saw an opportunity, so I took it. All the other villagers were too scared to come out of their hovels.’

‘Which might actually make them a lot smarter than you,’ Ben mutters.

‘You can talk! What have you done that’s so smart lately? Turned your husband into a freak of nature!’

If Ben had a jaw comprised of muscle, bone and flesh, it would be grinding audibly. As it is, he simply tightens the bandage strips resting just below his face mask.

‘I still find it hard to believe you are actually married,’ Viktor intones to his right. Indeed his voice sounds vaguely disbelieving as though he honestly expects Ben to have had to wrestle Rook down to the ground in order to get the ring on his finger in the first place.

‘Unless I daydreamed the ceremony, then yes,’ Ben replies, waving a hand dismissively. ‘That is definitely something that happened. So sorry you didn’t get an invite. We were fresh out.’ Then he leans forward, enough for Viktor to get a good glare at his eyes. ‘But you know what else I’m fresh out of? Patience! You might not be able to control your body the way you want, but you can still speak your mind. So use it and tell me where your master is!’

Viktor stares at him dully. ‘You are very stupid,’ he says. But there’s no outright mockery in his tone, not the way there would be with literally anyone else Ben has ever fought. ‘And much like my naive friend here’- he nudges the Thep Khufan with a sharp thrust from his elbow, ignoring her pained grunt – ‘you have decided to trust the wrong people.’

Ben's eyes narrow. But he does not shout, or demand answers. Instead he braces himself and settles in for the long haul.


	4. But Before the Countdown Began...

 

**Weeks earlier:**

 

_He is hungry, so hungry, his muscles cramped and cloaked with the small shadows that the space they have shoved him inside allow him to occupy. It is the only relief he has, these thin tendrils and lines embedded in the corners, so grey and small next to the light outside. The light...that **horrid** light that shines gold and shows no kindness except to those on the world below, those who should be here, falling before his fangs, dead and drained of all that will sustain him._

_His thoughts barely move inside his mind, barely pass and change. There is only pain and hunger, pain and hunger. And gold, gold that shines in front of him, that feels him with its dreaded heat._

_And then, one day: a respite. A shadow passing through and over, a harsh crack and clunk into the side of his prison. And it tears open._

_He should die. As primitive as those he feeds on are, most of them can breathe out here in the black, can move and glide and survive. He cannot. But he has been dead before, and the utter nothingness of it is darker by far, than anything out here._

_So he ignores it all, the pain that seizes him, the hunger that howls, and pushes himself through the small, squashed coffin, tearing into the metal with his claws to make it bend and break under each desperate scrape. He fall forwards, inward, into rapidly escaping warmth, and with the very last of his strength, shoves some odd, purple chair-like contraption over the hole he has created that sucks and sucks at everything inside, even his very life._

_A green creature comes to him, lifts him, and jabbers excitably about the ‘Plumbers’ and ‘oh man, oh man maybe it’s better to toss you back outside, where you belong.’_

_...even if the youngster hadn’t been plotting out his murder, it would not have been enough to save him._

_Lord Transyl lifts his head, finds the flow of green inside that person, the net of mana that marks out the chatterbox's life. And drinks it down._

 

\-------------------------- 

 

_Lord Transyl has never flown a ship. He has never needed to. Still, it does need seem to require much intelligence to yank the steering controls from side to side, to ignore the slight tear of the metal as he yanks a little too strongly, at least until he manages to point the ship’s nose down, towards the planet that condemned him out here, into space._

_If he knew how to, he would smile. He does not. All he feels is the hunger and the way it screams at him, screaming, screaming, all the way down to join the whine of the ship as he pushes it faster and faster, into the atmosphere to become a streak of fire in the sky._

 

\-------------------------- 

 

_The rest, is easy. The ghosts he cannot touch. But even they hover out of sight as he tears through the streets, wrestling screams from the throats of those who try to run from his Corrupturas. It is a little funny, to see their limbs shake from the strain of obeying that which he places on them, to see their bodies make jagged, aborted shivers, as his fingers creep over their shoulders, to turn them round so he can stare each of them in the eye._

_Food tastes better, when it is full of fear._

_That Mummy and Wolf, those two he recognises vaguely from before, and he takes great delight in pulling their mana down through his throat slowly, savoring each tremor that wrecks their nervous system as the green web inside them slowly flickers and dies. Of course, he does not make it easy. Why should he? They did not make it easy for him, when they forced him to circle that star, to become caught in an eternal orbit of pain._

_A Vladat does not forgive._

_Viktor, of course, should suffer the full fury of his rage. But Viktor...Viktor is clever. And though his thoughts, when he was trapped against the light of that star, were slowly and sticky, contoured with pain, they still traveled, still filled him with angry hope. Because that was what he had never been before: still. He had never been so utterly without movement, never forced to be without the food he hunted out. It was worse than death. Worse than death..._

_But now, bursting with life and with his hunger chased down into something small and content, he drops from the ceiling of the castle Zs'Skayr used to inhabit, and presses the Corrupturas into Viktor’s forehead with his thumb, slowly and cruelly, almost **slamming** it in. Viktor’s mouth opens in response, a small black hole to match the width his good eye expands to, the test-tube in his hand quickly shattering on the floo_ r.

 _And Lord Transyl then does something he has never done beneath. He leans in, instructs Viktor to talk. And then he leans back and_ **_listens._**

 

\-------------------------- 

 

_Viktor can build, can craft ugly things without elegance that can bring him from star to star, world to world. Lord Transyl watches Viktor’s hands as they hammer and wield metal, heating it into a red hotness before reshaping it into something smooth. Electricity bursts and crackles into corners and circuit-boards, purple enough to rub violet beams of light into the stone of the castle._

_And Lord Transyl circulates him as he does so, firing questions, one after the other, thinking through his orders before they leave his mouth._

_‘Never go to that green light in the lab, the one Ben Tennyson left behind..’ he instructs one time._

_‘Tell me, all the things that can make a living thing play dead...’ he demands another._

_‘Tell me,' he finally **asks.** 'What can make a living thing look like another?’_

_Viktor is too smart to open his mouth and say ‘Omnitrix.’ Still, once they are both on Earth, he presses the holo-mask into Lord Transyl’s hands, and stomps back to work, leaving the Vladat to run his hands over its cool metal surface. For a moment, he is reminded of the coffin he was stuck inside, how he barely had the strength to claw at its unforgiving walls. This mask feels exactly the same way. It is all he can do not to draw his claws down sharply, to strike gorges into its surface, to snap it listlessly in two. But no, he reminds himself._

_The difference is, this time he will not be trapped by it, for all it will hide him away. No, this time he will use this same sheet of metal to trap others._

 

\-------------------------- 

 

_Lord Transyl has never cared for knowledge that is the work of those beneath him. Let them spend their lives, before he cuts them short as is his right, scurrying about, collecting data and sheets of paper he will never read._

_He reads them now. Reports, near-novels on the things from each of the worlds his common prey live on. Viktor bribes and buys them from those who can hack into something called a ‘mainframe.’ He seems a little awe-struck that Lord Transyl can actually read or is bothering to show himself this way, upside down with a book in front of his eyes, his claws gingerly lifting each page as though it were a mouse spine he could carelessly crush._

_This is how Lord Transyl stumbles upon the existence of things called ‘dwarf stars’ by perusing reports lifted directly from the Plumbers database. This is also how he learns to pay more attention to a mineral called Corroidium, in a way he never has before._

 

\-------------------------- 

 

_He cannot visit Anur Transyl. Not properly. He wears robes of brown, dirty and beneath him, and passes into the sand only when the cool tinge of night falls upon the surface. The inhabitants, he learns, are shy and skittish, their purple eyes glowing like dull flames in the darkness of their hovels._

_Only one is willing to step out when he beckons, claws sliding out from his cloak like a sword from a sheath. He pulls out something black, dotted with the tiny stars the Celestialsapiens used to burn and place inside every utistil, back when they still stepped onto the world of his ancestors and suffered no harm. He and others of his kind buried these and others like it long ago on their homeworld, after a battle lost to history was fought. Or perhaps simply, a purge._

_‘This is older than your pitiful language,’ he tells her . ‘Try not to lose it. Otherwise I will lose sight of you, the next time we see other. And so will everyone else.’_

_She nods, wide-eyed. ‘I will not fail.’_

_Wedged into her side, her baby begins to cry._

 

\-------------------------- 

 

_The tests are smooth. The effects are glorious. Three worlds turned into a gourmet buffet. And when those strange white creatures, the mana inside them so cold and strange, approach Ben Tennyson, it is easy, so easy to wrap an arm over the throat of one and spirit him away, into an alley where no one will hear the slight clink of his gurgle as he feasts on the strange, stilted stream of his life energy._

_Lord Transyl runs a tongue over his fangs, trying to distract himself from the slight chill still trapped in his throat. Then he lifts the holo-mask and places it on his face as grandly as if it were a crown._

_Then, fakes robes of purple sweeping his every step, he walks out and three minutes later, joins the rest of the procession up the ramp of the spacecraft. He falls in line with the steady strides of Rook-Tennyson Blonko’s boots, shooting a warning glance to the shadowy form of Dr Viktor, watching from the market stalls nearby._

_It is strange. A Vladat has never needed to simply **warn** before. He grimaces. Hopefully it will not be long before he is powerful enough to take, rather than wait._

_But for now, **wait** he does._

 

 


	5. We Wait for the Funeral Bell to Ring

 

Ben stares at Viktor, appalled. ‘He’s been on the ship the whole time?!? He....ooooh, I bet he was Squirrel-Face!’

‘Then you would be wrong.’ The sleek, cold tone punctuates the air with a sharp, derisive twang at the end. Squirrel-face slides out into the air in front of him, or at least a holographic projection of him does. The pixuals flail to fluctuate, even with the buffing rise of sands that sweeps and twists round their ankles, as a small gale of wind starts to pulse over the dunes.

Ben narrows his eyes. ‘Even _if_ I am wrong,’ he retorts back, just as curtly. ‘You don’t seem to be all that worried about the fact that you have an old and powerful Vladat on your ship!’

Something strange seems to overtake the alien’s face as that. Ben still can’t read old Squirrel-face’s expression all that well, but even so, it gets the impression that the other is gleeful about something. ‘Oh,’ says the holograph in front of him, very, very softly. ‘You mean the Vladat that is responsible for crafting one of the more ingenious tools of chemical warfare we have ever stumbled across? A weapon that transforms life-forms and rids them of their original psyche, while not technically depleting them of their life-force?’ He raises a finger and points at Viktor. ‘Though I suppose we should take the feeble ‘brain’ behind the operation as well into consideration as well...’

Ben, despite what Kevin might say about him when he is drunk, is not stupid. Not when it comes to all the trite and cliché patterns of behaviour bad guys fall into it. It’s why he’s already brought up his arms before him into a cross and allowed his shape to twist and transform as Squirrel-face finishes speaking. ‘...Goodbye Ben Tennyson,' the swarmy guy says, all too smug for Ben's liking. 'And thank you for all your hard work.’

He’s no longer there when the holograph finishes speaking and twists itself off. He barely even registers the bright beam of light that winks Viktor out of existence, out of the corner of his rapidly disappearing sight. Instead his bright, bold body flies up, cutting a red streak across the sky. Up and out, through the atmosphere, despite the tight pinpricks of heat he can feels prickling across Jetray’s skin (for Jetray might survive the harsh environment of outer space, but he’s not too sure if that extends to the weird radiation this planet pours forth) and then he's out, into the blackness each planet is forever trapped within, the sprinkle of silvery stars dotted across the wide, wondrous landscape. Already the ship’s engines are lighting up, the gleam of pulsing blue light catching in the narrowed glare of his eyes.

Oh no you don’t, he thinks grimly, pushing all his speed into the metres of space between them, the strain of it screaming through his muscles as he reaches out and manages to hook his claws into the underside of one of it’s metal flanks. I’m not about to let you ditch me.

He’s barely in time. The ship streaks forward into the cold realm of deep space and he is left literally hanging, the equivalent to g-force, or whatever passes for it out here in space, shoving into his form as he clings to metal that creaks beneath his claws. Bearing his teeth even more so than he usually does in this form, he spares a fleeting thought for the other ‘bad guy’ they’d captured, Nailah, still restrained on the surface of the vanished world they’d just left.

She’s not human, he reminds himself. She’s made of hardier stuff and it’s like I won’t go back for her, after all this...

And if he dies, well, he’s sure one of the Plumbers will check up on all the planets he’s visited on his final mission in order to tie up any loose ends. It’s standard procedure when a Plumber dies before they have time to finish off their paperwork on said mission. And despite the grim thought, his lips tweak. Take that Rook, he thinks proudly. See, I _do_ read the files from time to time! ...Or at least I skim-read the handbook for rookie recruits in order to refresh my memory every two years or so...

His grin dies. Rook is on the ship, frozen, half-way transformed into a monster and completely at the mercy of a bunch of psycho aliens.

There’s a blinding flash of light ahead and suddenly the ship, and Ben along with it, are wrenched into a gleaming blue interstellar...galaxy?

Ben blinks. They’re suddenly no longer racing through inky blackness, but a placid, bright blue space, the colour reminding him of the surface of a lake, as it catches the bright, rolling green-blue gleam of light that sometimes swirls around the moon, as the light of the sun dances and rebounds off its surface. There are stars here still, but they seem paler, less bright than the one’s he’s used too. They glisten weakly like jewels that have been covered with dust, and left forgotten in someone’s jewellery box.

They travel forth, the ship leaving what can only be called ripples behind it, lines that spread and distort the gleam of colour around them. It’s as though the space has chosen to copy the properties of water, though it's nothing like the liquid is currently coating Ben’s form or clogging his throat.

Something silver rises ahead, a sleek, spinning castle that bears turrets that look suspiciously like the ones you see in picturesque animated movies, with tiled conical roofs to the towers, instead of the squarish juts of stone you see in medieval ones. The same blue gleam that is still fastened to the engines of the ship, spins at the castle’s base, like a revolving disc.

Ben waits patiently as the ship docks, and each slimy, stinky Squirrel-face lookalike rolls out into the transparent tube that extends from the castle and dips into the ship’s side like someone’s inserted a straw into a...well, a smoothie. No sign of Rook, which is...well, at this stage, he’s not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad one. He grits his teeth, and, ignoring the instincts that tell him to go after the bad guys with a vengeance, switches his form to Big Chill with barely a flicker of thought, all to slither inside the main body like a ghost. He jolts a little, feeling a slight thump as his leg passes thorough the metal and pausing, quickly shoves his head out of the ship he is attempting to travel into, just in time to see the frantic wind-milling of a loose coil of paper as it is tossed to the wilds of blue outside. With a sigh, he draws himself back out, turns solid, and seizes the stowaway which he assumes has spent the whole trip coiled round his ankle.

‘Looks like I’m not the only one who thinks on my feet,’ he says softly to Nailah, flying round to the place the engines are cooling off and aiming a quick blast of chilled breath at them. ‘You know,’ he adds, ‘if you actually _had_ any at the moment.’

The pieces of paper coil and squeeze themselves down into a wad that opens up, like a blooming flower, into the shape of Nailah’s face.

‘I can make some right now, and kick you with them,’ she threatens.

Ben wrenches the weakened engine free and begins chewing through the sawed-off pieces of metal above until he’s created a hole small enough for several pieces of paper to slide through. ‘I don’t have time to babysit you,’ he informs her quietly, before shoving her face against the barely-there crack. ‘Now make like a piece of paper, and squeeze through!’

She snarls back at him, but obeys and slithers through, Ben turning intangible a second later and following, before waiting, eyes trained on her movement, until she emerges into a place big enough for his shape to turn solid and not be crushed by the tangle of cables overhead. His blue claws reach out to grab her immediately.

‘Any funny business and I freeze you solid, got it?’ he threatens

‘Ow,’ she informs him testily. ‘Well, aren’t you a charmer?’

Ben snorts, but keeps his claws fastened round the paper that shivers and solidifies into an arm. He watches the rest of her body stretch and grow, paper curling like wines and spreading down into her feet that gradually take her weight off his hand.

Carefully, very carefully, he lets go.

‘You help me and I help you,’ he says, no question in his voice.

‘So long as that keeps my stupid baby alive,’ she tells him back, tonelessly.

He nods. He can work with that. As one they set off down the corridor.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Lord Transyl is having a remarkably good day. True, the interior of the castle is a little too bright for his eyes, no matter how well they are disguised by both the remains of the crackling holo-mask he has pulled over his face, or the hood he pulled out over his head, just big enough to make the shadows pool over the spaces of his face the ruined mask can not quite protect. But he is _here_ , inside a place a powerful race walk. He can tell by the energy that thrums through their veins, the blood gleaming like gold to his senses. If they had been inhabitants of the world he once ruled over, how he would have feasted!

But no, he can hold his hunger at bay, for just a little more...

He can’t tell what they’d saying, not really, not even with that headset he had pushed into his ears, after demanding the Revonnahgander to spill his secrets.

‘Tell me,’ he had hissed to that lower life-form, even more debased by the radiation his weak body could not fight off.  ‘Tell me of these people you work with.’

The face, ruined as it was by the black that swept over it and shorn off the fur, pushing the muzzle out that bore more resemblance to the rounded bunt of a lion’s muzzle than the humanoid head it had once been, twitched. And out had spat the secret of the translation program the creature had been working on. A translation program that was now hooked up to Lord Transyl’s ears.

‘Finally!’ he heard one silver voice cry out. ‘War! Over!’

‘Seek! With casualties...they will surrender!’

As one, all those gleaming blue eyes turned to face him.

Lord Transyl did not sigh, the way many other inferior life-forms would have done. No, he simply tossed away the mask contemptuously and ripped the hood off his shoulders.

‘You wish to use my idea,’ he hissed, fangs bared. ‘To force some enemy of yours into surrendering. How pitiful. You should aim for decimation instead. That is the mark of the truly strong.’

Two of these shining crystalline people wrench Viktor round, hiss into his ear.

‘That is my minion,’ Transyl informs them with a sneer. ‘Not yours. No, ‘ he remarks, far more softly. ‘What I want is to sate my hunger. Take those bombs, spread your war to every star there is; I will gladly watch.’

Some of these gleaming beings slide towards him.

And Transyl grins. ‘But first, some of you will fall to me.’

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Tennyson-Rook Blonko stares at the scrolling nuggets of data in front of him. He can barely read the language before him, barely even remember who he is. But he hangs onto the silk of the remembered voice that told him to thread every single round black object before him into the mainframe of the system.

‘I know nothing of science and technology,’ he remembers it hissing. ‘But I remember these people. There were only two of them and they came to those me and mine ruled once, all those millenia ago and fed them stories of so-called wonders, of science and technology. And that was how the first rebellion began. That was how Viktor’s kind began to crave such things for themselves, how they learnt to wreck destruction against my race. So I will spread discord, not only amongst the stars you forced me to circle, but amongst theirs as well. Everything will blacken and return to darkness. The way it surely should.’

Rook obeys, even with only the ghost of that voice to stir him. Each object, that for some reason sends a chill of horror rolling through his stomach every time he touches one, he pushes into the tangle of wires he shreds. He does not understand the language or code this system plays a part in. But he understands that despite the fact it can protect itself from the radiation coming from outside the ship, it can do little to nothing about the radiation that might theatrically unfurl itself from within. And if he can merge the resulting explosion with the hyperdrive, and the spectral chrono-platform range timer that controls the warp-engine...well, it will spread the radiation within these bombs over the castle and through the rip in space that will appear at the force of the warp-drive being ripped apart in the first place. Such force will jettison into their universe, will grow and spread with no outside force to stop it. Maybe it will be pulled into a black hole, or maybe it will catch onto some unlucky world, contaminate it further. And maybe it will never stop, so long as it fails to meet an opposing force

‘Either way,’ his master had told him. ‘It will put an end to you, the mate of Ben Tennyson. What more of a crippling blow could I give him, the one who helped Viktor bring me to my knees? I understand he is as sentimental as those I once ruled over. They were often easy to crush, once I rid them of their family members and chosen mates. Such fragile, paltry creatures!’

The remembered phrase stirs something in him. A memory of green eyes and pink skin, of fur, no, hair, as it so stupidly labelled, because it is nothing more than fur really, that remains brown, no matter the light it is dappled under, a shade richer than the rocks of Revonnah...

Revonnah, he thinks, and lets his hand drop. The name sounds in his head like a gong.

And then something whips into his head like a baton, like paper, but thinker, and ice crawls over his arms, stopping his clumsy claws from doing the things they should be achieving.

‘Where's the baby!’ demands one voice, one which holds no sway of him and another, another that trickles into his memory like the sunlight crawling over his bedsheets in the morning cries out, ‘Rook, NO!’

He is tumbled and tossed, ice smashing as he rips his arms free. The scents that accost him are of the desert, of heat and unpleasantness as paper wraps over his muzzle, tries to jams his jaws closed as other arms and legs pound into his stomach. Far too weak to stop him, of course, and with barely a strain his jaws rip open and his head turns, chewing and gulping down sheets of paper, winding and drawing in rolls of the frightened looking creature that stares up at him with wide purple eyes.

Then a punch sends him flying, blue wings sweeping out on either side as the added force of another body in flight slams him against the wall.

‘Cough her up, there’s a good boy,’ the big blue insect hisses at him and Rook obliges, spitting out clumps of paper straight into the face of his attacker.

‘Gross,’ the insect grouses and Rook bites down, claws at the body in front of him, one that shivers and turns invisible, slipping away from his touch with a flicker of motion. More ice rolls over him trapping him against the wall.

‘Easy there, Rookie, Rookie,’ croons that annoying voice. ‘Let’s just get you back in that chamber, and away from those nasty bombs, okay?’

But more pieces are falling together into ‘Rookie’s’ shattered mind, not quite slipping together neatly, but clinking together at all the right angles, all the same. He wrenches an arm free, nearly breaking it at the strength of the force he uses, and slams the blunt back of his palm against the green and black symbol that glares out at him from the centre of the chest that turns blue and visible to him again, as the insect floats forwards, ready to try something new. The next second, green eyes caught in a pink and brown face are staring back at him wide-eyed.

‘Huh, guess there’s more of you in there, than I thought, huh?’

That voice, there. Right there, in front of him. It’s so distressingly familiar that Rook snarls and reaches for it.

The creature in front of him instantly ducks and surges forward with a heavy punch that snaps his head back.

‘Sorry,’ it says. ‘Not today.’

Then it dances back and starts to slide it's arms one over one another in a cross. Another motion that jogs at Rook’s memory again, and he snarls, ice falling from him as he rips himself free and falls, pinning the annoying pink and brown thing to the floor. His claw tear down, gentling themselves slightly at the flash of fear that cross the face in front of him, but still ripping those arms away from one another and crushing them under the weight of both of his limbs all the same.

The pink and brown thing tries to kick at him and Rook instantly sits on his legs. To which the pink and brown thing offers up a glare.

‘Really? What are you, a dog?’

Rook leans forward, senses keen and alert. Then his tongue darts out, nimble as a cat’s to lick.

‘Ow, ow! Sand-paper tongue, okay, okay, I get it, you’re cat- _like_ , nothing _like_ a dog at all, sheesh, I’m sorry.’

Rook blinks, the taste lying on his tongue and conjuring up memory after memory. ‘Ben,’ he says after a while, digesting all the new knowledge this name brings. ‘You are my Ben.’

‘Yours and everybody else’s,’ Ben grumbles from beneath him. ‘But hey, at least I know you’re not completely cuckoo.’ He still looks wary though. ‘Think you can get off me?’

Rook attempts to draw back, but a tightening on his scalp stops him. Ah, he thinks dimly, as if in a dream: the Corrupturas, of course.

Ben looks up at him knowingly. ‘So, you probably can’t break free of the mind-control thing, right? That’s cool. Still love you, even if you’re all nasty-looking right now.’

Rook is caught between crying and laughing. More memories shiver within his head. For his Ben is always like this, is he not? Aging and nearly dying on multiple occasions cannot rid him of his flippant mouth, much to his enemies' despair.

‘C’mon.’ Ben smiles at him, low and heady and if it were not for the wary glint in his eyes, Rook would be fooled into thinking he actually means it. ‘One last kiss before you kill me?’

Rook struggles, and Ben winces as the weight that hold his arms and legs down, judders and pushes him against the floor more harshly. ‘I would never,’ Rook rasps out.

Ben turns his head, strains his neck up. ‘A lick then?’ he manages and Rook can’t help it; the Corrupturas is cold and heavy on his forehead, and it feels like it weighs as much as a stone as it drags his head down, urging him to rip off this human’s lips, to swallow them down in gushes of blood. No, no, he thinks desperately, and before he can scream within his own head, his nightmare turned real, Ben’s raises his head, twists it, and seizes hold of the Corrupturas with his teeth. It’s not something the he can simply wrench off with the puny power of his human jaw muscles though, but the mere fact of his mouth eclipsing the eyeball with a wet, mammal heat, seems to make some part of it panic.

Rook rears up under its response, dragging himself away as Ben’s fingers fumble to the side. They reach out, and after snapping off a thin piece of ice nearby, throws it at Rook with enough force to make the other blink and raise an arm. Grasping for more seconds no doubt, just enough to slide his arms into a familiar cross. And then, with a flash of light, Chromastone appears.

‘Hang tight, baby,’ he says, before his hand reaches out and closes over the Corrupturas, cruelly blasting it with a wide array of yellow, gleaming light from his stone palm. The Corrupturas instantly lets out a squeal and breaks apart into ashes in a matter of seconds.

Rook gasps, falls over and remembers. Everything.

‘Ben,’ he says again. But still. Nearly all of him is gone, lost to the corruption that wrecks its way over his flesh.

‘Don’t worry,’ Ben tells him. ‘I’m a hero, remember?’

With another flash of light, he reverts into Gray Matter. ‘Now, let’s see if we can sort out this mess you’ve made.’

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Bodies sprawl over the shimmering floor, puddles of blood spreading in endless mirrors as Lord Transyl gleefully rips through them all. His mouth is rimmed with grey, splatters of blood slicking his teeth and his fingered claws hold down his newest thrashing victim as they penetrate the side of that spotless neck.

How funny, that they thought themselves superior to him! And yet, they had underestimated his physical abilities. Strange, how years of living into a singular universe, away from the variety of species that chokes his own, made them arrogant. Too arrogant. At least Lord Transyl’s arrogance is richly deserved.

And then, suddenly.

**AGONY.**

It rips through him, like the light that spills through the castle as though the walls don’t exist, as though they bear no real barrier to it’s sweeping purple spread. It pours through him, every fissure, every vein, cooks him from the inside-out. It is so much worse than the star they sent him dancing round years ago.

Like lava it pours through his cells, disintegrates them to dull, dank grey ashes. Within seconds these blow away and the only trace of Lord Transyl that remains are the specks of dust that line the blood of his latest kill.

Viktor watches all this, steely-faced. ‘Fool,’ he says. ‘As if reading a few books would automatically make you clever.’ he smiles, loose-lipped and abruptly gleeful. 'You thought you had learnt something. And maybe you had; but not enough I'd wager. The simple truth is, _Lord_ Transyl, is that you can never learn enough. And you can always lose to someone dumber than you.' He spears the corridor behind him a wry glance. But Ben Tennyson doesn't suddenly run out of the shadows to accost him. 'I know that all too well. Just as I know that sometimes you have to take advantage of whatever breathing space you get.'

After this, he turns and stomps away. The few beings that remain are too busy shivering and clutching at each other to stop him, though inevitably, they follow after him a few minutes afterwards, a clear shudder in their steps.

And yet they do not stop to notice the way some of the ash left behind twists and spins, merging between the flicker of space these white crystal beings have twisted into this universe to make their own. Perhaps it is nothing. Perhaps it is something. But either way, it will attack nothing.

At least, not for today.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not entirely accurate there, Viktor. Ben's pretty smart when he's in his Galvan form.


	6. Flash-fire for a Wake

 

The light fades. And Rook’s hands – his _hands_ – lower from his face.

‘Ben,’ he chokes out, eyes widening at how familiar his body is to him again, how easy it turns and moves at his command.  The muscles move and twist beneath his fur like a river, and his fingers, as they run over his face, encounter no bulbous snout.

‘Here.’ Little Gray Matter attempts to shove a mirror he has crafted out of a few spare metal pieces and some ice at him, but Rook barely gives it a glance, catching sight of his familiar yellow eyes in the gleam of machinery about him, as well as the purple-blue blend of fur resting on his old face as it should be. Instead he scoops Gray Matter up with his cupped palms, nuzzling him close to his face.

Gray Matter immediately flails and chokes, spitting as fur tickles his mouth and Rook grins, rubbing his nose against the squished bump of Gray Matter’s brow.

‘Watch it! Easy there, you could take out my eye!’

Rook grins even wider and offers a damp kiss to that tiny grey ridge above said offended-looking eye.

Ben sighs in response, slams his hand against the Omnitrix symbol and bursts back into his original form, Rook’s hands easily parting round the growing bundle of human muscle and arranging themselves into a hug instead.

‘Hello, dear,’ he says to Ben’s bemused face. ‘Mind explaining what you did?’

Ben sighs, but mollified _slightly,_ says, 'there was...okay, bear with me here, because it’s hard to remember what exactly it is I do as a alien genius, when my brain is of the regular human variety again...but I kind of got the part of the engine that absorbs the light of the stars and reversed it, making it take on other forms of energy from inside the ship. I specifically high-tuned it to take in the energy emitting from you and those bombs. Oh, and I got their weird chrono-reader platform to run a diagnostic scan of your cells, and revert them to the condition they were when you first arrived on this ship; it had some time-stamped entries of the biological scans it runs on everybody when they first beam on board. And I kind of...attached all that to the bombs so they would send out this fission of new radiation instead of the stuff Lord Transyl wanted to send out. And-’

He’s cut off then by the firm stamp of Rook’s mouth against his. He freezes for just a moment, surprised, before he abruptly relaxes, letting a murmured moan pass between them, and allowing the sound to vibrate into Rook’s mouth, as the other’s tongue reaches out to sew its way into the space of Ben’s throat. Ben’s own tongue in response, playfully scraps against the intruder, caressing with strokes, while Rook’s curls with the characteristic laps of a cat scooping up water.

That’s a cheap move, Ben thinks before pulling away, his own arms now as tightly fastened around Rook as his husband’s remain trapped round his side.

‘I knew talking a bunch of technical jargon would get you all hot under the collar,’ he remarks cheerfully.

Rook rolls his eyes. ‘Trust me, Ben; it was not at all that technical. Though I will give you the satisfaction of knowing that yes, indeed, there was a great deal of jargon in your speech. And not much else.’

Ben pulls back. ‘I hate the fact that people never believe me when I tell them you’re just as impulsive as me when it comes to making out.’

There’s a clatter then, and instantly their arms drop from each other, their heels instinctively pivoting as Ben’s arms raise into a familiar cross and Rook’s hands drop to his belt, either to drag out some tool at his disposal or curl into ready fists. But the only sight they’re met with is Nailah, eyes narrowed with caution as her arms firmly wraps round the tendrils of loose paper that curl and shiver around a bunch of odd hissing sounds. Like a rattlesnake, Ben reflects, only softer.

‘Is she alright?’ he asks softly, raising his hands up in an obvious look-I’m-not-going-to-transform-right-now gesture. Nailah steps back none the less, the paper of her foot ripping out a soft scratch of sound against the metal tiles.

Ben stops and looks strangely offended. ‘Hey now, I wouldn’t hurt a baby!’

Nailah snorts; though it sounds weird and almost musical, as it travels to their ears with all the reverberance Thep Khufans carry in their voices. ‘No; you just want to separate us.’

Ben’s eyes narrow. ‘You almost killed me,’ he points out. ‘And your actions, in no small part, could have hurt a lot more people than you probably realise.’

‘As it stands,’ Rook adds, stepping forward, so her eyes are drawn to him, and away from his husband.  ‘The people you have helped have devastated entire worlds; to think you could simply walk away from all that is naive at best.’ Then his eyes narrow. ‘And thoughtless, perhaps even sociopathic, at worst.’

She glares at them both. ‘Whatever. I’m no fool. Talk it up as much as you want, and hide behind your own sense of morality. Every person on my planet knows that the Plumbers have always been about preserving the status quo ‘at best’-’ and here she raising two of her rippling fingers into a set of curving quotation marks, so much more elegant than anything with bones in its hands could produce. ‘-and letting worlds they don’t care about stagnate ‘at worst.’ She snorts again. ‘And I’ve heard enough rumors and fables about some strange place called the Null Void to guess at what happens to the regions of space you really don’t care for.’

Rook frowns. ‘The Null Void is not a planet, nor does it simply boast a particular-’

Ben elbows him before his partner’s voice can truly take on that lecturing tone that tends to gnaws on people’s nerves. ‘The _point_ is’- he stresses, ignoring Rook’s sheepish smile, - ‘is that we’ve not some totalitarian government or dictatorship. We don’t interfere with the day-to-day running of planets unless they’re busy trying to rule over the _other_ err, day-to-day stuff on another world. We don’t want to control _anybody’s_ homeworld. Nor should we. We just try to make sure that everybody still has a world to go home to at the end of it all.’

Nailah doesn’t look convinced. ‘I still think that’s it’s a rather fancy way to say you don’t care as much as you want people to think that you do. What are you, apart from a bunch of adrenaline junkies? As soon as the battle’s over, you go home.’

Ben feels a little wrong-footed and very much offended; but that’s nothing compared to the way Rook is now glaring at Nailah, the familiar ruffle of fur branching out over the bridge of his nose as it wrinkles. Uh-oh, he thinks. Rook is usually the calmer of the two of them. But he’s not very good at keeping that same calm, when the career he left his homeworld for is under verbal attack.

‘Look,’ says Ben. ‘Let’s shelf this argument for now, okay? Clearly you have a very different view of what our place in the universe is-

‘-a distorted one,’ Rook interrupts coldly.

‘Not helping, Rook!’ Ben hisses back. Cool it Blonko, he wants to add, but no, he usually leaves off using Rook’s personal name unless they’re in dire straits, or else encased in the intimacy of another moment, usually with the protective addition of a bed. It’s a...Ben thing. ‘Look, for now, let’s just get off the ship, and stop the silvery creeps and Mr Wannabe Dracula from doing...whatever it is they’re actually doing.’

‘The silver people are probably dead,’ Nialah states, sounding like she doesn’t really care either way. ‘I can’t think of anyone who could stand up to Lord Transyl and, well, _live_.’

Ben grins. ‘Trust me: I’m not just anyone.’ Then, on seeing her skeptical look, adds, ‘no, really, you just caught off-guard last time! I’m actually-’

Rook shakes his head and starts to walk off, through the yawning doorway, Nailah following him a few paces behind, without sparing him so much as a glance. Ben gives up a few seconds later, following after them with a sigh.

‘You know,’ he grumbles. ‘It’s a sad day in the universe when the villains have more manners than the guy I’m actually married to.’

 

\-------------------------- 

 

No hint of a grumble escapes Ben though, when he is confronted with the sight inside the castle’s main hall. He stares for a brief second at the copious amounts of blue liquid that runs out in puddles from the sprawled-over forms of aliens he had been standing amongst not half a day ago. And then he knocks himself out of it as he runs over to the nearest body and brushes a few rough fingers over the exposed neck, bringing himself to a halt at the edge of the gaping hole he encounters there. Grey muscle shines through, the gleam as sharp as piece of glass catching the light and he shudders internally at the destruction.

‘These guys always were secretive,’ he mutters. ‘They refused to share any details of their overall biology with us, right Rook?’ he raises his voice to address this point to his partner, who is busy running the same customary check over a body on the other side of the room, though his nose quickly wrinkles with disgust at whatever he finds there. Nothing pretty, Ben’s sure.

‘I do not suppose it matters too much at this point,’ his husband states grimly, rising to his feet. ‘They are not so dissimilar from us that they can survive having their throats ripped open.’

Ben shudders. ‘I guess this means...we don’t have to worry about whatever it is they were up to?’

Rook shoots him a sharp look. ‘My translator was far from perfect, but I gleaned enough information to know they wished to use the bomb Viktor had designed as some sort of leverage over their opponents.’

Ben pauses to digest this. ‘Opponents? As in another species? Or just a different delegation of other squirrel-faces?’

Rook grimaces. ‘As I said, my translator was far from perfect.’

Ben scowls, and bringing his arms up into their familiar cross to turn into a Vladat, all so he can quickly scan his eyes over the bodies splayed out over the floor. But not a hint of the familiar glowing coil of veins and arteries that usually nestle within each living body greets him, apart from the jumble of lines resting in Rook’s. And of course, there’s nothing resembling blood in Nailah or her daughter’s body, through he notes that their headpieces burn with a dim, burnished light, a strange grey-white in his Vladat vision.

Which is...interesting. Perhaps Vladats are drawn to anything that resembles life, and in aliens that don’t posses blood, their hunger sharpens and they pick anything that could work as a substitute. How you’re meant to drain a Thep Khufan of its headdress though is anyone’s guess.

Ben’s eyes land on a strange escalator of sorts, that whizzes round and round above their heads, miniature silver platforms similar to the flattened barriers of mana Gwen can call up, being spat out into the void to rise up and round, at a frightening speed. Luckily he has wings and so up he glides, forgoing the helter-skelter-like ride entirely. Rook of course, is not so lucky. Though in all honestly, Ben’s sure the other man can retain his balance a lot better than Ben can in his human form. He keeps one eye on the faintly pulsing nest of his husband’s blood vessels regardless, ready to dive and drop the instant they tilt a little too much to the side. But he’s not surprised when they reach the top with minimum effort, Nailah joining them an instant later with a one flex and pull of her arm bandages.

‘Should you really have brought your daughter with you?’ Rook asks testily. ‘She is an infant!’

Nailah snorts, and really, Ben thinks, it’s impressive how many of those noises she manages to make given that she has no real nasal cavities. ‘I’m not leaving my youngling on an alien ship! What if one of them goes in and flies off without us! She's a pain, but I don't actually _want_ her dead.’

There's a faint level of contempt in the narrowed shape of her purple eyes as she gazes down at her daughter, and Rook frowns before he gazes down the wide corridor they find themselves in, the mirror-like platforms of the walls and floor now taking on a greenish hue. ‘I suppose there could be a few survivors,’ he concedes gruffly.

‘Ven let’s go find zem and ask some questions,’ Ben says softly, moving down the corridor in a near glide. His eyes shift anxiously to pick out the tell-tell glow of blood and the blot of colour that will mark out a heart other than his husband’s. It takes but a few seconds for his senses to coo at him, to pull him over to a narrow doorway in a glide, and he hovers there, just long enough to motion to Rook where he’s going, before he pushes himself inside in a single spill of movement, his form quickly swallowed into the shadows and crawling up against a nearby pillar inside.

Viktor is there of course, a rather pleased-looking-bad-guy smile on his face, as he points at a monitor hauled up against the entirety of the wall. And judging by the chirps coming from the three cloaked figures in front of them, what he’s saying is being met with approval. Ben narrows his eyes and peers closer. The monitor is a horrible blare of yet more blue, a swirling vortex decorated with similar hues to the ones that roam the space outside the castle. But there’s stars there too and black shapes dotted amongst them, stretched into familiar humanoid ones. Ben’s eyes widen slightly upon recognising the Forge of Creation.

So much for it being hidden or lost from the rest of the universe, he thinks grumpily.

‘Even the mighty Celestialsapiens cannot cope with the life-draining properties of the planet known as Anur Vladias,’ Viktor states, all of him looking horribly confident. ‘Some of your people once, long ago, helped us devised a weapon of mass destruction, that rendered the planet inert of all life and wiped the Vladat race from existence. And now it is my turn to help you. Once we have deployed my invention amongst the nesting grounds of such hallowed beings; and watched them twist, into what, I can only guess, you can make as many demands of their elders as you wish.’

Ben narrows his eyes and with a twisted pucker of his mouth, spits a newly formed Corrupturas straight at Viktor. The guy’s too busy being buoyed up by the sound of his own voice to notice the quick dot of green that darts out between the space between them and fixes itself to his forehead. However the moment the cold, barbed feel of the wings touches the furrows in his forehead, his face twists in horror.

‘No!’

‘Oh yes,’ Ben says coldly, stalking out into the flicker of light that plays out from the monitor. It stings a little, but not as much as it could have, if it were unfiltered starlight for instance. ‘Threatening babies, even omnipotent ones? Not. Cool.’

‘Though I confess my confusion,’ comes Rook’s voice, floating out from behind him, and Ben turns slightly, just enough to confirm that yes, Rook’s got everything at his end under control; all three silvery aliens lie in a heap, two lying there practically unconscious, while one curls up slightly under the press of Rook’s boot. ‘I do not see how your bomb could hold any sway over the ‘cells’ of a Celestialsapien, for lack of a better term. Why should they mutate?’

Ben narrows his eyes even further. ‘Vey may not,’ he says slowly. ‘Vut... there iz more than Celestialsapiens being born there. Professor Paradox said ideas were born and became real. I imagine something horrible would still happen if you set Corridium off there and have ramifications over the rest of the universe regardless.’

Rook scoffs. 'I find it hard to believe the Celestisapiens could not reverse such ill effects.’

‘You would have to get vem to agree first,’ Ben remarks grimly. Then he gives Viktor a sly look. ‘Hop up and down on one foot for the next five minutes.’

Viktor glares. And slowly, like the heaviest pogo-stick in existence, he obeys.

Ben can barely hold his cackle back at the look Rook gives him.

But then the stars on the screen suddenly flare out, harsh and white, and Ben recoils with a screech, barely remembering to have the presence of mind to slam his hand down on the Omnitrix symbol and fall back into his human self before he can become nothing but ashes. With a dizzy wrench of his mind, he realises that fate has probably already befallen Lord Transyl. He had been keenly aware of it as a possible side effect of the light that might be emitted from the new bomb he had developed as Gray Matter, but had chosen to shove it down, deep down under his concern for Rook, prioritising the survival of his husband above all else, at least at that particular moment. If he does feel any guilt, it’s a tiny non-committal trail of thoughts that he’ll only have time to examine later, much later.

Either way, he’s more keenly aware of the effect of his actions, now that he’d been nearly vaporised himself. Blinking, he glances up to see a Celestialsapien, big and butch, with a beard swirling out before him, along with the miniturised coil of a tiny Milky-way-lookalike rustling within its folds.

‘You would disturb the place of our birth?’ he asks, voice deceptively mild, even though the chorus of male and female tones embedded within each word give the question a ring of the grandiose about it.

‘You threw us out!’ spits the alien under Rook’s foot. He tries to roll himself free, gives up two seconds later, and then yanks his head round, the pulse on his neck thumping like a jackhammer. ‘It was our home as well as yours!’

‘Your kind were mere guests, resting in a space we provided for you,’ intones the Celestialsapien coldly. ‘A temporary space. Your arrogance caused your universe to fail eons ago. It was only when you plotted to drive us from _our_ home, that we took action and exiled you into a proper universe, so that you could make your own space. Since that seemed to be what you desired, after all.’

The alien beneath Rook’s foot shakes. ‘This paltry universe barely holds the minerals, or even posses the _potential_ for the chemical compounds that were so readily available in our original universe!’ he, or she, or perhaps even _they_ , spits. ‘But yours...the space you keep for yourself...there are so many potential power sources waiting to be born there, and you hoard them all for your kind!’

‘And you _forget_ yourself,’ the Celestialsapien says gravely. ‘And so forget how small _your_ kind truly is.’

And as though to complete the effect, he raises the trident he holds and bashes it against the floor. The space around them immediately wavers. No, _ripples._  And Ben finds himself staggering as the floor and walls distort, his arms rearranging themselves into the shape of limp noodles, ones found within the weaving curves of a funhouse mirror. And then suddenly everything is still and normal once more. Except for the fact that Viktor and the three aliens who survived Lord Transyl’s rampage, are gone.

Rook’s eyes widen as his foot falls though the empty space where the protesting alien has been seconds before, landing with a soft clunk on the floor. He stares down at the space, that odd twist in his mouth announcing a softened sort of disappointment of being denied a decent arrest.

‘We have taken them to court,’ the Celestialsapien offers up, upon the questioning glance the Revonnahgander gives him. ‘But we will not allow anyone else to be privy to the proceedings.’

Rook’s brow comes down and Ben knows he wants to protest, bring up the fact that these four have caused untold harm to worlds that the Celestialsapiens will probably forget about in the course of their trial, and that they deserve a reckoning for that the Plumbers can all too happily provide. But his jaw remains closed, though his fists clench tightly at his sides.

Then the Celestialsapien’s eyes alight on Nailah, shuddering in the side of the wall. ‘You took something from us, little one,’ he states gravely. ‘And we do not take kindly to thieves.’

‘Nobody was using it!’ she protests. ‘It was just a knife! And it was simply sitting in the fist of one of your kind who was sitting in one of our disused temples! He didn’t even bother fighting back when I took it!’

‘He was inexperienced and had a rare strike of conscience while he was deliberating whether to hurt you or not,’ says her accuser floating over towards her. ‘It is a malady that sometimes affects us. But not me. I have outgrown such things.’

Nailah shudders, a few bandages tumbling from her form in her nervousness. Ben immediately places himself in front of her.

‘Whoa,’ he says, raising his arms. ‘Steady on; it’s just a knife, as she said. I don’t think that warrants you dragging her off to god knows where.’ Carefully he starts to slide his arms closer together, ready to bring them up in the cross that will allow Alien X to spring up in his place.

‘Drag?’ the Celestialsapien inquires. ‘You misunderstand. As she stole, so shall we steal back.’ He raises his arm. And Nailah's arms fumble through the air, the baby she had held within them suddenly gone. She glares as her fingers stretch and reach out for the opposing alien, becoming razor-thin whips that glean through the Celestialsapien’s dark muscles as though he’s no more than a ghost.

Great, Ben thinks. He’s a decisive one of his kind. And then his own arms come up and cross, there’s a flash of white, and he’s floating in a sea of green faces. Well. Five, to be precise.

‘Look,’ he breaks in, before either of them can accost him with words or insults, or annoying remarks about how they don’t care about the missing baby. ‘I know there’s a baby at sake, not the universe, and so you probably think it’s not important, but so help me, if you think that means one of your own kind can come charging in-’

The opposing Celestialsapien, outside their own private universe, flicks out a finger and sets Nialah’s bandages on fire. And she shrieks, as Rook rushes over attempting to stomp out the flames, while bringing out a thin nozzle from his utility belt, one which squirts out a thin stream of foam that dampens but does not put out the blaze entirely.

Ben hisses through his teeth as he watches a flame dart out dangerously near Rook’s fur. ‘Okay, instead of asking for an action to be performed, how about I ask for some information,’ he says hurriedly. ‘How much right does he have to steal a baby, which you know, is a totally disproportionate response to someone stealing a knife!’

‘Err...’ mumbles his teenage-like personality. ‘Liiiike...none. At all.’

‘You’re thinking about it from an overly emotional perspective,’ Bellacious grumbles. ‘You’re getting as bad as Serena!’

Serena’s neon-green face immediately swivels round to face him, looking thoroughly offended. ‘Excuse me, but just because I’m a physical manifestation of compassion and peace, doesn’t mean I’m incapable of thinking rationally!’ Then she narrows her eyes into two thins slits of gleaming black. ‘Besides...he’s not actually wrong in this case, is he, Bellacious, dear?’

Bellacious looks down into the vast black nothingness beneath Ben’s feet, and, well, all around them, really, and mumbles something.

Serena raises an eyebrow, one of her eyes opening up into a yawning pit of tar. ‘I’m sorry, what was that, dear?’

‘...You’re right,’ admits Bellacious, sounding as though the words have been physically dragged out of his mouth. ‘That uncouth individual doesn’t have a leg to stand on.’

One of the other personalities starts cackling like a hyena, inserting small snorts beneath individual peals of laughter. It sounds a little like Kevin on the rare occasions when he’s both wasted and not feeling totally morose as a result.

‘That’s all I needed to know, thanks,’ Ben mutters.

‘STOP!’ he and the multitude of voices that makes up his voice as Alien X in the outside world thunder out. ‘You have no right, moral or otherwise, to detain an infant for the actions of their parents!’

He waves a single, shimmering black hand and several small wormholes, no larger than a set of dinner plates, open up beneath the joints of the other Celesiasapian’s limbs. The immense shift of gravitational force, acting against the bend of an elbow, or the curving drag of a knee, despite the lack of carbon-based bones within, successfully hold the stranger in him place for a moment. And Ben takes advantage of that single moment, along with the knowledge combined from all his other personalities, to open their awareness, just enough to track the living signature of the baby that has vanished.

‘Oh,’ says one of his personalities, within their collective consciousness, one who popped during that dreadful day when he was twenty and Vilgax had done something so vile, that he had ended up sleeping in a test-tube by the time Ben had finished with him. ‘What a complete nerd. He’s obviously been watching too much Doctor Who.’

She directs their attention to a universe almost identical to their own, except it’s running a few seconds faster. And there, a confused baby is crawling around, glancing around at the odd white people and their diamond-bright faces who hover over her, unwilling to actually reach out and touch her.

‘You’re just a show-off, Kira’ grumbles Bellacious, as she smirks at him. ‘And a sadist,’ he adds shortly as she proposes that they should ‘really open up a few more wormholes, and wretch the other guy’s sockets out of alignment!’

‘MOTION DENIED!’ everyone immediately shouts.

‘Motion to phase baby back into our universe?’ Ben growls out, trying to keep his patience.

A pause. Then Serena agrees with a smile, Bellacious agrees with a grumble, and everyone else agrees with a mixture of good grace and a drawled ‘yeah, whatever,’ from the teenage wanna-be, who promptly receives the stink-eye from Bellacious for the wording of his reply.

All of this, naturally, takes place in less than a second. Over the years Ben has found a way of cheating the system, by managing to get everyone to agree to let their debate play out, then compress it within the time of a second. It’s a really complicated maneuver that only stupidly powerful races can do and one he promply forgets the temporal mechanics behind, when he’s any other kind of alien, even a Galvan.

The words ‘motion carried’ have barely faded from their mind before Alien X reaches out an arm, pulls the baby back through the shifting layers of two universes, and feels a shudder running through his multidimensional cells as he does so. He ends up with a wide-eyed baby within the curl of his multi-starred arm a moment later, gaping at the air around her as though...well, as though she’d been thrown through time itself.

Ben immediately spins and douses the flames whirling through Nialah’s body after another second-long debate, cringing at the whimper that escapes her throat. Rook is bent down beside her, running careful, gloved fingers over the charred pieces of paper that run out from her body and crumble at his touch. He winces in sympathy and immediately whips out a fast-cooling gel bottle from his pouch, slathering it onto the affected area thickly, a grim twist to his mouth at the sight of the peeling bandages.

The other Celestialsapian yanks his limbs free, but seems to hesitate before his next move. Which makes sense. He’s probably deliberating with his other minds on what precisely, said move should be.

Sucks to be him, Ben thinks. Too bad there isn’t a human mind floating amongst the others, one that has who watched too much sci-fi, and can think outside the box.

‘Back off,’ he warns him now as Alien X, narrowing his eyes. ‘You only get one warning. I shouldn’t even give you that much. You tried to kidnap a baby! A _baby_.’ 

The other Celestialsapien gives him a glare. ‘We cannot allow ourselves to be robbed by creatures that inhabit the lower planes of existence! Can you imagine the havoc they could wreck with our interdimensional weapons, throughout this realm you have designated yourself as the protector of?’

Ben, or rather Alien X’s chest puffs out. ‘Then don’t leave it lying around in a place people are bound to stumble through! It’s not like that dagger had your name written on it.’

The other Celesialsapien puffs out his chest in return. It's a display of machoness that Ben doesn't know Celestialsapiens were capable of caring about. ‘Yes it does! You just have to be able to perceive two dimensions at once in order to see it.’

Oh, is that all? Ben thinks snidely. ‘Is this guy for real?’ he mutters to his other personalities and while one of them, Havoc, starts laughing hysterically again (and yeah, Ben doesn’t often strike up conversations with that weirdo for this precise reason), Bellacious sighs. ‘As real and as unreasonably selfish as you are, yes.’

Ben glares. Thinks about giving Bellacious the finger. Then fights down the impulse like he has, oh so many times before.

‘You should leave,’ Alien X tells the Celestialspaian. ‘And if I see you pulling any stunts like this again; well. Trust me. That’s not something you will want to do, Celestialsapien or not.’

And then he pauses. Raises a finger. ‘What sort of justice are you thinking of giving to the people you transported away?’ he asks. ‘You are aware that one of them was coerced by a Vladat to make a weapon of mass...mutation, right?’

The Celestialsapian freezes. ‘I had thought you would not care too much. He is not what you would deem a ‘good guy.’’ And you have never overly cared what happens to those, as long as they do not end up gruesomely murdered.’

‘I care because I am the ‘good guy,’ Alien X growls. ‘Ask most of the universe! Or at least a good seventy-five percent of it! Now, no more deflection! Answer the question! And while you’re at it, heal her!’ he points to Nailah.

‘Heal her yourself!’ retorts the Celestialsapien, stung. ‘Besides, it’s not like you need to worry about the others I have transported! Those interlopers wanted the old periodic elements of their home universe available to them? Well, we shall grant their wish! I’ve placed them within a pocket universe, one barely big enough to house a solar system. They’ll have their minerals. Just not enough to build their former cities, or even a space-craft! But you bring up a welcome point regarding Viktor. We shall house him within the space dimension. Perhaps if he makes us a trinket fancy enough to please us, we shall allow him to leave.’

Nailah croaks. And Ben frantically searches and seeks through all her cells, the endless senses that merge with his thoughts, along with the stream of voices that come from Alien X’s mind, finding the distortion within. Lucky that's he's had practise competing and tuning out all their voices, though he half-listens all the same.

‘He’s overlaid the disintegration with his own personallised signature,' shouts one, 'weaving the electrical psychic signals with the timed rate of destruction for each individual cell!’

‘That’s tacky, how old is he!’

‘Older than the bloody human we originate from, you pitiful excuse for an ego...’

‘Who cares if it means we can’t stop it without his permission!’

‘A personallised killing signature, that’s rather interesting...’

‘Oh, do shut it, Kira!’

‘Motion to knock this guy into the centre of next week?’ Ben grits out.

And seconds later, after a chorus for agreement, even from Serena, he’s punching the guy through a metaphorical Monday that has yet to come into being, all while kicking his legs out from under him and pushing the feet into a timeline where it’s next Tuesday.

‘Call it off!’ he near-bellows. ‘Or do you want some more?’

The other guy stares at him, eyes wide, two burning pits of light that shine like stars in his face. Ben wonders how many people have stood up to him before. He guesses not too many. And then after a tiny pause, too small for a lesser creature to pick up upon, the guy nods.

Nailah gasps, her chest buckles, flaking out into what look to be large fronds, curiously shaped like the spiny leaves of the plants Rook likes to collect sometimes. And Ben watches the guy leave, watches as he phases through reality back to one where a dagger can have a name written on it in two dimensions rather than a measly one. And then he **slams** to the ground beside Nailah, her baby in his arms as she fumbles, her legs and arms unraveling into brown dust, all as she slithers and writes down towards him like a snake in its death throngs.

Rook stares at him helplessly. ‘I cannot help her.’

Ben grimaces, then gentles seizes a curl of paper, that is rapidly flaking away and tangles it loosely over the pile of paper that is her daughter.

‘I...’ mumbles Nailah, her mouth collapses in on itself into a hole that unveils sheets of paper beneath, her headpiece rusting into a tarnished red-brown before their eyes. ‘I...’

Her headpiece cracks. ‘I wanted...a better...’

This message is for the child in his arms, the child who isn’t old enough to understand the words her mother is telling her, Ben knows. But he still lowers the baby’s head, or what he hopes to be the baby’s head, down to the whispering trails of brown and black paper all the same.

‘...life...’

Then the headpiece touches the floor, beneath flattened bandages. Before it springs up again immediately, the paper rustling and reforming, still brown and charred, but whole and growing. Within seconds, an actual face is formed once again. And Ben breathes a sigh of relief at the sight, sensing her cells working overtime to repair that damage before calling off his transformation. Human once more, he feels the slide of paper in his hands, over skin soft enough to be sliced into and smiles down at the baby. Beside him, Rook breathes out a sigh of relief and knocks into his shoulder, almost daring to slump into his side.

Ben gives him a surprised look. It’s not like Rook to remove the rod from his ah, behind while he’s still on duty like this.

Rook smiles at him, tired. ‘We need to talk, you and I,’ he says quietly, though the solemn tone is belied a little, by the relieved look in his eyes.

Ben works down a gulp. And hopes it hasn’t been too apparent by the crafty loom Rook gives him when he utters a shaky, ‘sure, honey,’ in reply.

Nailah lets out a shaky breathes of her own and then slithers into a stumble, reforming two legs beneath her. ‘Urgh,’ she says. ‘This was a pain.’

Rook stares at her contemplatively. ‘You know, I could arrest you, for helping two criminals out of your own free will.’ Then he looks at the gurgling baby and seems to deflate. ‘...but apparently I am a discredit to my badge. Perhaps I will put off the arrest until a little later. After we have cleared up the mess you helped create in the first place.’

Nailah stares down at her baby, tracing out her shape with her eyes. ‘Yeah,’ she mutters softly. But the look in her pupil-less eyes is troubled.

 


	7. Homeward Bound

 

The ship they came in has been untouched. And after a few vital minutes of 'fiddling with the buttons' as Ben calls it, to which Rook heaves a barely-there-but-still-put-upon sigh, they race off into the sky, straight to Galvan Prime all so Azumuth can sniff and snort at Ben’s cobbled together explanation of what he did to cure Rook. The scientist gifts them with a heavy scowl before he tells them to 'stay there' like they're _pets_ or something, before wandering off and coming back with a much more refined emission beam that does the exact same job within the next seven minutes.

Ben frowns. ‘I just wished you would have come up with this earlier,’ he says dryly. ‘Aaaaand I know, I know,’ he mumbles, upraised palms before him in the face of Azmuth's grumpy expression. ‘You’re busy and can’t get involved with every single crisis out there.’

Six minutes later, and after some tactful pulling at Rook's arm, because the guy gets this lost-kid-in-a-toy-store look on his face _every single time_ they come to Azmuth's workshop and see all the large and sometimes quite tiny metal objects inside, they're jetting off again, Azumuth's newest shiny object firmly in hand. From there, they travel to each and every place touched by the disaster and Nailah watches silently all the while, as the crawling black creatures struggle and wiggle under the light they pout over each planet’s surface. They all seem to explode into a sudden flare of light, like oil caught alight, light that curls and peels off the twisting shape like flames before it dies to reveal their original form.

If Ben had been a few decades younger he may have felt the need to make a reference to Pokemon or Digimon evolution. As it is, he stays quiet, watching Nialah out of the corner of his eye. Then, after a moment he asks, ‘were you planning to keep your baby after you got the better life you wanted?’

Nailah freezes and while Rook’s head doesn’t _quite_ whip round, Ben sees the new angle his neck leans into, and knows he’s listening very intently.

‘You don’t hate her, or even resent her, and you care about her enough to make sure she isn’t dead. But...I’ve never seen you speak to her the way I see parents do to their babies with those weird soft tones, like they’re talking to a new pet. You...never bring yourself down to her level.’

Not the way Rook does with his younger siblings, or the way I sometimes do with my fans, he thinks. Not in the slightest. You haven’t made a single effort. You hold her and you don’t want her to die. But...that's it.

In response to his observation, Nailah glances down, eyes hooking onto the monitor in front of them as families on the surface reunite. For a brief second, a son leaps into his father’s arm against a backdrop of writhing, crying bodies, and Nailah turns away. ‘I never wanted a baby,’ she finally says quietly. ‘But you’re right about one thing, Plumbers; I didn’t want her dead either.’ She shrugs. ‘I wasn’t planning on giving her up...but who knows.’ She glances at her baby, still curling round her arms. ‘Either way, it doesn’t matter. I may be going to jail...but at least I won’t have to spend another night battling against a desert storm, or struggling to find water from an underground well.’

There isn’t much he can say to that. Perhaps Nailah feels the same, because she doesn’t struggle when they take her baby from her, and not one single objection rises from her mouth when they tell her that they’ll find good people to take care of her. In fact, she looks so at peace with herself, as she runs fingers over the TV panel resting in the wall of her cell, even adds an odd happy strut to her step as she leans over a bed she prepares to unravel her legs over, that Ben feels oddly wrong-footed. As though he’s lost a fight he didn’t even know he was having.

‘Wait!’ he has the presence of mind to call out. ‘Her name...you never told us her name!’

Nailah turns. She looks at him with pity. ‘I never gave her one,’ she says smoothly. ‘To me she was just ‘my youngling’, or ‘my baby.’ And turns away again, the television a much more welcome distraction.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

‘We’re not taking her back there,’ Ben says in the Plumber’s mess hall later. He’s nursing the loose sheets of paper now trailing over his arms, while trying to force them back into the shape of a baby at the same time. So far, he’s found that poking and pinching in certain places causes ripples that force her to take up her actual body for a minute or so before unraveling again. Her gurgling seems to indicate that she finds it to be an enjoyable game of some sort at the very least. And Ben can't help but wonder if he can convince her to turn into origami shapes when she’s old enough. It could be fun. The kind of thing he’d do if he was her. Hell, even as Snare-o, he has formed a few swan and dove shapes out of fingers over the years, even presented them to Rook one valentine as a half-hearted joke. Only to feel a little guilty when the Revonnahgander had promptly beamed at him wholeheartedly in return and thanked him for the spontaneous gesture. ‘It is very you, Ben,’ he had congratulated him. ‘And perhaps strangely enough because of it, a little romantic at the same time. Well done.’

The sad part is that he hadn’t even been sarcastic about it. All gleeful eyes and wide, bright teeth...

Though the eyes that Ben sees before him now, as he turns to glance at his husband are far from gleeful at all.

‘You are referring to her home planet, correct?’ the other man inquires steadily, the look in his eyes equally firm.

And Ben swallows. ‘Yes, I...perhaps we could, you know...adopt her?’

Rook does not bring the spoon traveling up to his lips to a sudden halt. But he does close his eyes gently for a second or two, the spoon wavering before he sets it down on his plate again with a gentle clink. Panicked, Ben quickly checks his own plate, and remembers that he’s had the presence of mind to order lasagne, which at least tastes like he’s got earth vegetables hidden inside the mush, if nothing else. He’s better at stomaching ‘foreign’ cuisine these days, if by foreign you mean food that doesn’t actually look like it wants to get up and battle you, but even so...alien food is a an acquired taste. One he’s never really cared to develop too much.

‘Ah! Alright, I’m sorry, I know you’re going to think it’s one of my spontaneous and immature decisions but really, well...you said we need to talk!’ Ben finishes off defensively, attempting to cross his arms before realising he has a baby tangled round him. Yikes. Those parenting lectures he’s been getting from Kai have nothing on this.

‘No, I...’ Rook pauses. Swallows. ‘Are you serious?’ he asks. ‘Yo-We have...’

It’s a pressing temptation for the Revonnahgander to say ‘you have,’ instead of ‘we have,’ but he manages to bite it back, slamming it back down hard into his mind. He has promised himself not to alienate Ben (if you’ll pardon the pun) like that. It will always lurk at the back of his mind though, the idea that in a timeline out there, perhaps most timelines, Ben is or **_was_** fated to be with Kai and raise Kenny the traditional way. He swallows again and continues. ‘We have,’ he solidly repeats, ‘...a child of yours already on the way, as you well know.’

Ben looks at him steadily. ‘And doesn’t that just drive you crazy?’ he asks softly.

Except it’s not a real question. Not really. There’s steel in Ben’s tone, a rigid certainty there that won’t be driven away by any deflection Rook can think to throw out there.

Rook sighs. Looks out at the assortment of aliens in the mess hall, wondering how many of those families they speak to on their holo-casters are comprised of the same species. Wonders how many in the room right now are possible hybrids, rare as they, considering biological incompatibilities between parents and the often resulting sterility of the successful offspring. But mostly, he wonders what it feels like **not** to feel trapped by the weight of such an expectant atmosphere in front of him, being delivered by his husband. Would Nailah approve, he wonders. Would our lives, fraught with peril as they are, be a suitable environment to raise someone she wanted safe, if not always directly beside her?

But those stuck in jail cannot always claim responsibility for the lives they leave behind. And the Thep Khufan do not have adoption agencies that he knows of, at least not the poorer ones that Nialah seems to have lived amongst. And the baby, even now, charms him in the way she entertains Ben, bringing a puzzled frown to his face each time he attempts to unravel her like a rubik’s cube.

Rook has always been soft to things that make his husband happy, and cause some new emotion to spring onto his face. It makes him, as Kevin so rudely points out ‘a total pushover when you’re not on the job.’

‘Let’s see if I am still crazy tomorrow,’ he mumbles, though deep down, he suspects that his answer will be the same, no matter how many hours of calming sleep he manages to receive tonight.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Two weeks pass. And much to his un-surprise, Rook finds his answer unchanged. And his regret: minimal. It still exists though, mainly because Ben is Ben, and he already has had to be talked out of trying to push youtube tutorials on origami-folding against their daughter’s face.

Nailah meanwhile, or at least the paper print-out of her files, remains closed up inside a ceremonial jar, the pictures inscribed on its sides being that of jackels and snakes, and other similar-to-earth animals the Thep Khufan find sacred. Rook keeps it in a safe within their home, determined that Coraline, a name Ben has begged and pestered for him to put on their Earth adoption papers, should have a connection to the only mother she will ever have when she's old enough to ask.

‘Blonko,’ his husband whines. ‘C’mon, c’mon, pleeease?’

Rook stares at him, while fighting down the same tired tangle of emotion he feels at having his chosen name wielded against him like this. Then he sighs. Raises the pen. And signs away his permission to the name that oddly enough does not rhyme with Ben, Gwen or Ken. Perhaps it is just as well. He may just lose his mind otherwise.

‘If Coraline grows up to hate you for naming her after a movie character,’ he states dryly in the face of his husband’s beaming enthusiasm. ‘I will point in your direction and let you take the full brunt of the responsibility.’

But Ben is lost to his words, cooing nonsense about how Coraline is gonna love that movie, yes she is, button-eyes and all, and Rook sighs, knowing a losing battle when he sees one.

But deep inside, some part of him thinks, yes, yes, finally, now I can breathe. And the spectre of Kai, still swollen, even with a silver ring on her finger, becomes a little easier to manage, the next time he sees her in Plumbers Headquarters.

‘So...’ she ends up punctuating her opening word with a confident thrust of her elbow, one that causes him to take a step back and cast an unsure look in her direction; they’re never been on direct speaking terms. Oh sure, they can talk to each other, about mission briefings, and give the odd incoming yell to each other about when to duck and dodge an enemy fist or strike. But they’ve never been...friends. Just acquaintances.

Kai gives that confident half-smirk that sits on her face with the same ease Ben’s cocky smile flits  onto his own. For not the first time, it strikes Rook that the two are more similar to each other character-wise than they would have others pretend.

‘...I hear you guys are preparing to welcome your own bundle of joy.’ Her eyebrows rise and the quick angry look she throws him, while not enough to disconcert, _is_ enough to make him wary. ‘I hope this isn’t another way to make Kenny’s life difficult,’ she continues. ‘Or is this just a healthy way to make him face some stiff competition for his Dad’s attention?’

Rook is a little thrown by this accusation; in fact he almost opens his mouth to throw out a biting remark in return. But then he sees Kai’s hand drift down to tuck round her stomach securely and reminds himself, yet again, that she doesn’t have the benefit of Ben’s reputation, or his own Plumber rank to fall back onto, and, instead, has often had to fight and claw her way through her career. It’s no wonder she takes to motherhood in the same fashion.

‘The preparations are more than complete, since she is already here,’ he states, as politely as he can manage. Which isn’t very. ‘Besides this should come as no surprise to you; can you imagine Ben handling a human baby, by himself for more than an hour? I would have thought you would be happy, to see him get in as much practise as possible for a baby which...is not as fragile as a human one.’

Kai’s face goes suspiciously blank. Then she lets out a faint chuckle. ‘Ha! Whenever I next hear someone say ‘love is blind’ I’ll have to throw them your way...’

She walks off still chuckling to herself and Rook is left feeling...not happy exactly. And not quite calm. But perhaps...satisfied?

He watches Ben comes towards him now, a trace of his usual wry anxiety in his eyes whenever he sees Rook and Kai interact voluntarily. And he also happens to be sporting several bandages where he shouldn’t, straps of the-now familiar Thep Khufan material nestled over and around his ears and hair, even draping over the ruffled tucks of his t-shirt. Rook shakes his head and moves to help untangle their newfound ‘bundle of joy’ as Kai dubbed her from his husband. His husband who has now in this particular moment of time, stretched out his arms in the reminiscent pose of the zombie that haunts Earth media and moaned out a long, plaintive ‘heeeeeelp.’

Rook shakes his head again. Love is not blind, he thinks. It just distorts one’s view. Mostly for the better. Or at least, if not that, for the funnier.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Cars no longer run on roads of tarmac, or skim over long stretches of the beaten track into the distance. The American dream is dead. Well, ones involving traditional road trips and mix-tapes anyway.

Now, what passes for a car are long, sleek sliver ships that look more fish than vehicle, hovering and darting through air currents that remain heavily monitored  by millions of invisible cameras, hooked along cables and built into the grit and speckle of skyscrapers.

‘They are not invisible,’ Rook argues, for the millionth time. He leans inside their ‘fish’, a frown of fierce concentration on his face as runs a hand over the multitude of bandages that have settled into the shape of a small, heart-shaped face. The rest lie tangled along the length of his arm, but he is unfailingly gentle as he brushes them aside and un-loops them from his wrist, folding them down into the navy car-seat strapped in the middle. ‘They are simply atom-sized. And virtually undetectable to the naked eye of most species.’

‘Sure,’ Ben replies dryly. ‘Because that makes it all so much better.’ He taps his fingers idly along one of the doors, something that opens out of an oval hatch and leaves a puddle-like imprint in the air. Sometimes he misses it, all the various colours and bustle that used to infuse the roads below; now they lie gleaming in a dark-blue sprawl, rivers that build up and store solar energy over the miles of uncovered space that no longer have need to play host to a multitude of wheels. And all the rural ones are now gone completely, choked off by weeds and plantations of alien crops that grow close and tangled into the cracked soil.

Rook straightens, after giving Coraline a lopsided smile and a gentle brush under the chin, grinning as a surprised rustle escapes her in place of the more usual gurgle you would hear from a baby built of flesh; and fixes Ben with a knowing eye.

‘Do you wish to stay here and argue? Or are you actually going to get into the car and accompany me to your cousin?’

‘Actually, I was hoping to put it off as long as possible,’ Ben admits. But he slips inside without further argument, self-consciously checking the grey shimmer of a safety belt that Rook has determinedly fastened over the wiggle of bandages in the seat between them. ‘Yesh, kiddo,’ he mutters, patting the closest thing he can find to a head in there, because already the ball-like structure is unravelling from around her glowing eyes. ‘You sure this thing is strong enough to hold you down? I thought it was the terrible twos we had to watch out for.’

‘Ben,’ says Rook, his voice and presence suddenly a lot closer, and smothering into his space. ‘The safety belt is capable of holding down someone like Fistina. I checked-’

‘By which you mean you tested it with a series of weights and mechanised pulleys, no doubt.’ Ben cuts in with a knowing look, voice warm and teasing.

Rook shoots him an annoyed look and continues. ‘-and there is no designated time in which a child is suddenly a lot more badly-behaved than any other. I should know. I have four siblings who I have watched over since infancy, after all. And what I can tell you is that they were all equally capable of being quite bratty. It is almost as though they are all individuals who suffer from various mood swings in the same way as any other living being.’

Ben elbows him in the stomach gently. ‘Yeah, okay Mr Babysitter-exordinare- you’re the expert here.’

‘Yes,’ Rook agrees readily, tugging Ben round and tapping the side of his chair to indicate the flashing icon that shows a passenger flying forwards out of their seat. ‘And now it is time to show me that you are not a child and capable of doing up your own safety belt.’  

Ben raises a brow, but does as he is told. ‘Careful; who knows when I’ll suffer from a terrible mood swing like ‘any other living being.’’

‘Yes, well, you will always be a brat, my dear,’ Rook says breezily, leaning close enough to fasten his mouth against Ben’s in a quick perfunctory kiss  - one primarily designed to stop any protest escaping. ‘And I have absolute faith that you will never outgrow it; so I can hardly fault you for wishing our daughter to gain that which you obviously lack.’

Ben’s mouth opens in mock outrage. ‘So sassy,’ he mutters.

And Rook grins and flicks the power on, the engine barely letting out a whiff of a hum as the car moves smoothly out of the black hole of their twenty-storey high garage and connects smoothly into the nearest air-lane.

Ben huffs a sigh; that’s yet another thing he misses. The ability to actually drive.  He watches with a bored pang as they trail after another flash of silver barely ten metres in front of them, any possible stopping or braking distance calculated perfectly by the on-board computer.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Rook asks softly and Ben turns to him with a smile, propping his bearded chin into his hand as he does so. Leaning against the window offers him the perfect angle to see the downward tilt of his husband’s mouth and the slight crease above his eyes. That’s his Rook, alright. Sassy, but sweet. Especially when he attempts to adopt figures of speech into his dialogue.

‘Are you sure you can afford them?’ he asks, feeling humoured when the worry leaves slightly from Rook’s clouded brow.

‘I married you, ‘for better or for worse,’’ his husband says dryly. And if it had been possible, Ben is sure he would be fixing his attention on the wheel in front of them, pretending to fasten all his concentration back on the road again. Unfortunately for him, manual driving is now a thing reserved primarily for spacecraft.  ‘I think I can handle-’

But whatever words he would have spouted, are cut off by a wavering tendril of grey squishing against his nose. Rook pauses, slightly cross-eyed as the bandage rolls up like the tipped curl of a butterfly’s antenna and perches on the black shelf of cartilage that marks out the end of his snout, and as adorable as it to see the wrinkles bunch up above it and the nostrils flare out beneath, Ben decides to adopt the role of ‘disciplinary parent’ and turns round...only to receive a face full of bandages. It’s like a forest back them, thin white stems exploding like a bunch of bedraggled streamers all over the upholdery.

‘Ah.’ Rook has now tentatively taken hold of the bandage accosting his nose with a single finger and thumb and holds its straining edge away from him as he turns, wide-eyed, to see the same mess that greets Ben’s sight. ‘Oh dear.’   

‘You know, I half expect you to start sprouting some line from an educational textbook about how it’s healthy to stand back and let kids explore their surroundings,’ Ben mentions offhand, but before Rook can turn to give him an incredulous stare, he has already crossed one metal-clad wrist over the other, and then his bones are collapsing into nothing, it’s stretching into a sharp crisp thinness that divides and tears itself away from under the seatbelt. And then Snare-oh’s mask dives headfirst into the nest Coraline has made out of herself.

‘Now young lady,’ he says, poking and prodding at her with his own limbless tendrils; and a small shuffling rustle, like the small whisper of leaves as the wind rolls them over the ground, addresses him faintly, like a laugh. ‘Time to pull yourself back together.’

It’s easy, as Snare-oh, to see where she ends and begins, a sense of rightness governing his eyes in the same way he’s used to seeing a human limb bending only in a certain way. Thep Khufan don’t have joints or bones or even muscles, not in the way he could ever understand them; but they respond to touch and tension, and Coraline lets out a series of small squeals as he gathers up some of his form into a rake-like shovel and begins scraping her off the ceiling and floor.

Maybe there is something to be said for self-driving cars; Rook would probably either have crashed or pulled over by now, for fear of the way her flattened body is governing three quarters of the back-window. He pries her off the glass with one careful thrust, the motion as smooth as water.

‘Daddy’s gonna flip you like a pancake if you don’t straighten up,’ he threatens, bouncing part of her up into the air, enough to let a squeak escape, one purple eye suddenly pushing itself into view from the ball, while another pins him to the seat and Ben suddenly finds himself fixed under the golden glare of his husband.

‘Relax Rook, I only eat the really _naughty_ kids,’ he stresses, trying not to feel too smug as Coraline suddenly struggles and rushes to push herself back into a bundle of limbs and a slightly tubby body.

Rook sighs.

‘I cannot wait to talk to Gwendolyn,’ he deadpans. ‘It will be nice to speak to an actual adult for a change.’

 

\-------------------------- 

 

‘Awwwwww,’ Gwendolyn squeaks. Actually squeals. Like she’s seven.

Ben watches with a sense of distorted horror as her hands reach up and clasp each side of her face, as though trying to twist and turn the skin inside into a heart-shape. Behind her , Kevin rolls her eyes.

‘Sooo,’ he says, longuing against the doorway, arm crossed over the entire width and perched a good ten centimetres above Gwen’s own. ‘This is the newest Tennyson to terrorise us all.’

‘It’s Rook-Tennyson,’ Ben reminds him for what feels like the twentieth time. ‘And yes; she’s going to grow up to be able to thoroughly kick your butt.’

Gwen’s look of melting adoration is wiped off immediately, her brows drawing together, tight and angry to rake Ben across the coals. ‘Ben! You can’t use such language around the baby!’

‘Gwendolyn!’ Ben mimics, copying her shrill tone. ‘She’s just a baby! She doesn’t understand a word I say! Which means,’ he carries on confidently, hosting Coraline and her navy-blue baby carrier more firmly into his arms as he ducks and steps under the bridge of Kevin’s arm. ‘-I can say whatever I want around her.’ He pauses, gently easing the seat onto the nearest surface, in this case Gwen’s purple sofa and dares to meet Rook’s glower. ‘At least,’ he corrects slowly, ‘within reason.’

Rook crosses his arms. ‘We both know what you said is abundantly untrue. Otherwise you would not have threatened to eat our daughter in the car five minutes ago – and she would never have given any indication of believing you.’

Gwen turns round slowly. ‘Ben!’ She honestly sounds shocked. Ben’s not sure why.

‘I’m not actually going to stuff my daughter down my gullet, you know,’ he says tiredly, tuning out Kevin’s cackle in the background. ‘And besides, my parents used to tell me way worse stories to get me to behave.’

‘Yeah, right,’ says Kevin, crossing over to sling an arm round Ben’s shoulders. It doesn’t fit quite as easily as it used to, but it still feels just as comforting. ‘We’ve all met your parents. They’re hippies through and through. They probably gave you a bunch of time-outs and nothing more.’

Ben narrows his eyes and throws Kevin’s arm off with ease. ‘I turned out fine, thank you! And Coraline’s gonna turn out great too! Aren’t you, sweetheart?’ he adds, swinging Coraline round and up, so his face eclipses her view of the room around her. She coos at him, round eyes wide and curious and Ben stares at her a moment. He feels a little unsteady, under-prepared for this. Truthfully, he’s never had a burning urge for children. Kenny’s coming into existence because he feels guilt that his marriage with Rook, might be wiping the kid from existence, and maybe it would be different if he had married Kai, he’ll never know for sure, not now. But Rook wants something like this, and he’s going to have help take care of a human baby soon, very soon.  And Ben...Ben is here. With someone who didn’t come from him and Rook, not the way Kenny will come from him and Kai and the combined data of their bodies. But Coraline, still came to them, from one out of a million missions they had together anyway. She fell into their heart and made a slight impression there, one that will grow if Ben allows her too.

More importantly, it’s got nothing to do with destiny or fate, or time travelers and their prophecies and honestly he likes it that way.

Falling, failing, he’s done it all. Time to soften the landing for someone else for a change.

 


	8. Coraline

 

Coraline does not bleed or receive broken bones when she falls. No, she _flutters_ like the paper she is, all while being tugged down by gravity...but at least in the first few years of her life, one of her Dads is usually waiting to catch her by the end of her slow, unraveling journeys to the ground. These arms, human, Revonnahgander, or otherwise (because why would her _human_ parent ever allow himself to be limited by the choice of a single species' limbs?) are there before the carpet or floor tiles batter her body. Not that she can feel it. Much. Not the way she's seen toddlers, the more flesh covered ones, scream and wail when a bruise colours their forehead.

Coraline, she finds, is very  glad that she cannot bruise. She prefers to stay mostly one colour, thanks.

‘Up, up, up and away!’ laughs her human parent on those occansions when he does manage to catch her, a look of manic glee on his face as he tosses her up again, but gently, _far_ too gently for her tastes. ‘Just like a superhero!’

Right. Because that is what he is. Which means that he can't contemplate her not wanting to be one, or at least not wanting to play as one, while she is still small enough to be fooled by the cartoons.

Coraline will look back at these thoughts years later, too embarrassed to admit that maybe, _maybe_ , he was right.

Her Revonnahgander parent, on the other hand, does not use such childish remarks when he tosses her, but he does smile and tell her that one day she will reach heights higher than this, higher than both of them will reach.

‘I will never have to worry about you in quite the same way,’ he states confidently. ‘Though conversely, I still find that I worry more about you, than any other creature comprised of flesh and blood, all the same.’

Coraline is too young to understand these worries at the time. But she will grow into them over the years. Enough to marvel at just how weird it is, to have a body that hurts and lets out red fluid when you squeeze too hard at certain parts. And how strange to see it shiver and fail to fall apart at other times, no matter where you press down with your fingers. Blunt things will not break the skin or tear the fur, only crush the bones beneath. It is sharp things that cause blood to flow out of the two bodies that raise her.

Years later, Coraline will have spent enough time nestled between these two bodies on the sofa at this point, will have felt their warmth beating through the paper that is her skin; and yet each time she feels their softness when their skin and fur touch the bleak thinness of her bandages. And instead of giving anything warm and soft back, her bandages will let out a set of crisp scratches, sounds that rustle and tear, insteadly of nestling back into her parents sides. As though to be spiteful. No, there is none of that physical 'squish' that practically everyone else in her world gives off. Father’s fur smashes against her cheek and spreads with the same feathery weight it does against her Dad’s in splatters of blue, but it does not tickle, and fails to make her scrunch her face or wrinkle her bandages the way she has seen it do to the bridge of Dad’s nose. Her bandages are not designed to produce such small crinkles, such thin fault-lines that skin can do, even without permission of the one it is attached to. She is not hard, but she is not as soft as them either. She is leathery, like a snake, and hollow.

And it frightens her sometimes, how much warmth they have to give, how they are so full and heavy next to her, their muscles weighing her down like lead balloons when they touch and stroke and encourage her to lift the pages of the book she is reading. She learns to read the words inside, lines and dashes of ink that do not explode into pictures the way the writing of her own culture does. No hieroglyphs, except for the ones Father tentatively gives her, his brow furrowed and harried as he works to translate the two-dimensional falcons and people wearing loincloths into a story she can understand. He fails, more often than not.

‘There is no English equivalent,’ he says angrily to Dad, his fingers making harried, stormy trails over the mug of coffee Dad tries to force into them. ‘There are phrases that I could maybe play with in my native tongue. But even then, they do not use verbs the way we do. For them, a thing and an action is one and the same. Perhaps because of the way their bodies work. So much of what they do, stretching, extending, wrapping, they are not merely actions to them, the way running or reaching is to you or I. It is simply them, all of them, filling a space they could not before. They do not possess items, they make them a part of themselves, burying them under their ski-’ Father hesitates then, his fingers halting. His word choice seems to trip him up and Dad takes this an opportunity to physically force his hand round the large ceramic mug bearing the title of ‘NO. 1 Workaholic’ on its side.

‘Looks like this subject is running away from you, pal,’ Dad says, furrowing his brows at Father as he does so. But he doesn’t sound as playful as he usually does. ‘Or rather; is it getting under your skin?’

‘No,’ says Father waspishly, ‘just you.’

Coraline peals herself away from the cracks in the door, all her unraveling ‘skin’ sealing itself back together, wrapping itself round into the shape of a girl. She stares at her hands, at the hollow bend and tuck of her fingers, feeling them crease as she moves them. Darkness leaks through the gaps between each paper strip, barely noticeably but still there. There is nothing beneath them, nothing between, no red to spill out and no heart to beat out life-giving liquid whenever she tears herself open. She has no idea what it fills like to carry heat inside her, to be constantly full, the way her parents always are.

Father is right, she reflects. She does not unravel, she does not stretch, she is still there, when others on this planets would be dead at the changes she forces her body through. She is _here._

So she decides to experiment.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

She pushes the torch deeper into the barrel of her chest, locks her bandages around it tightly, leaving the trailing end of one still stuck around the switch like a twitching curtain cord. She lets the yellow glow of the torch seep through all the black cracks in her forms, all those gaps where once nothing but darkness lay. But now she lights up like a lamp, the yellow light of the torch pasting a healthy bloom of gold through her stomach, her chest, her arms, all of her.

It is probably the closest she will come to having a halo, one that will not drip round her head. And then she waits, waits and waits, for the heat to build. It barely does so, no matter how long she waits, so she gives up, yanks it out, replaces it with the private glow of the orange lantern her Father likes to collect from his homeworld, delicate crystals you squeeze and perch onto cables.

In contrast to the torch, they glow orange inside her, her paper taking on an amber hue in response, and she feels like a dragon, a reptile trapped inside its shell, waiting to break out of the skin of its egg, as the heat rises and rises, blooms merrily like fire inside of her. Her limbs protest, her arms unravels slightly, fingers traipsing into small ribbons in protest, and eventually she is forced to unravel herself from that warmth, to fall away from it like a snake shedding its skin. Perhaps she can only accept heat from the outside, rather than the inside. The thought is sobering in a way she can’t quite explain.

The next experiment is to stick her hand inside of a paper shredder. It is stupid, reckless, but she feels giddy at the thought, as though Father is about to come racing in and yell at her the way he does to Dad on the TV, when they can’t quite escape the grip of a camera after a serious fight.

She does not brace herself for pain; Dad has told her not to scream or worry when parts of her tear or rip, that if she concentrates she can re-grow and re-form almost everything that used to be there.

So without further ado, she feeds her fingers into the top of the shredder and presses the button. With a whirl and blur of noise, her arms is yanked forward and she panics, scrambling for the button as yellowy lines of her appear in the tray below, thinner than the chilly fries Dad likes to wave in front of her. She yelps and tugs as the whirling stops, the slender blades inside the machine wedged into what used to be her wrist and a red light flashes as an incessant indicator of a paper jam.

Perhaps she is too tough for the machine to swallow. Literally.

Her parent find her two minutes later, sulking, her fingers still stretched out into French-fry like strips below her and her wrist crinkled and severely creased. And the shredder firmly in pieces.

‘So that’s what that noise was,’ Dad saying, running an appreciatively eyes over the charred mess of a smoking shredder. Then he scowls.‘Look just because you’re made out of paper doesn’t give you the right to destroy other people property, even if does shred material that’s like...’ he fumbles, his fingers amusingly enough taking on the same unsure trails her Father’s danced through a morning before. ‘You,’ he finishes firmly.

Father meanwhile bends down, low enough to sweep his eyes over her face. He takes hold of her wrists, running careful fingers over the bumpy dip that on any other child would mark out a broken bone.

‘Were you trying to hurt yourself?’ he asks gently.

Coraline looks away.

‘It’s no big deal,’ she mutters, ‘it’s not like it’s skin. I don’t scar.’

He freezes at her word choice.

‘Maybe not physically,’ he murmurs. ‘But your Dad is right; that does not give you reason to do so.’

Coraline flutters her wrist away from him, her fingers managing to curl, to shorten slightly.

Her Dad meanwhile falls down to her level, his eyes made wide and frightened by Father’s words.

‘Sweetheart,’ he says, his voice suddenly low and hushed. ‘You don’t actually want to...shred yourself, right?’

She shrugs.

‘You said I couldn’t die that easily. I’m not like you.’

He sighs. ‘No . But that doesn’t mean you should push your luck.’

She’s pushed it far enough she finds. Because she’s grounded for the next two weeks.

 

 -------------------------- 

 

One day, in the future, they will take her to a planet where the sand slides beneath her feet, where they have to wear heavy suits over their clothes to protect their bodies from a new sort of sharpness, one that can run into cells and twist them into something dangerous. Dad could transform to escape the scary change, of course. But Father cannot.

But she will stay safe, the only twisting to _her_ cells being the ones she chooses, when she slithers out like a snake or peals herself apart.

‘This is where your mother lived,’ her Father will tell her, his voice sounding distorted and strange as it echoes out of the grill that looks like a cheese grater over his mouth. ‘Where you were born.’

‘And where I first landed eyes on your pretty face,’ her Dad joins in, reaching out to clam a metal-clad hand on her shoulder.

They’re like the knights from fairy-tails, she thinks amused, or the Forever ones that hate her and Father so much, that wish to crush them out of life itself, despite the fact that she doesn’t feel much different from them. Maybe next time she runs into one she’ll convert her shape into an giant origami dragon, poke something sharper than a paper-cut through the thin slits in their visor.

They take her to see others of her kind, point out the place her mother’s hovel once saw. Not there anymore, now long since whisked away by sand and disuse.

‘Nailah,’ Father says, fingers stroking as soft as they are able to, over her shoulders, despite the suit. ‘Her name was Nailah. And she chose to give you to us.’

Coraline’s glad. She can’t picture being happy in this place, one that is nothing more than a giant sand-pit without a shovel or ocean in sight. It’s worse than the beaches at home.

She feels curiosity stir at her though. She would like to see her mother, touch her, wrap her form around her own larger one, ask her questions. She has many, of course she does. And now she has a name. Perhaps that is all she will ever really have.

Thank you, Nailah, she thinks. Whoever you were. Thank you for having me, for keeping me alive long enough to give me to my parents. And then lets her these two parents, the only ones she will ever really have, lead her away.

‘You wanna do anything?’ her Dad asks her in the spaceship later. ‘Movie? Or, um, a museum? One with Egypt stuff?’

From his place behind the steering column, her Father aims a glare at her Dad, who looks uncomfortable, fiddling with his fingers as though he’s decades younger than he really is.

And from her place behind him, Coraline sighs. She is, to coin an Earth phrase, far too used to this shit.

‘No,’ she utters softly. ‘Right now, I just want to go home.’

 

\-------------------------- 

 

Kenny is there, like he is every other weekend, eyes bright and serious.

‘An alien planet,’ he sighs wistfully, dunking a chilli-fry into a brown sauce that makes Father’s nose wrinkle with distaste. ‘That sounds awesome. How come you never take me anywhere that cool?’ he addresses this last question to their Dad with a small glare.

Dad frowns. ‘I take you to cool places all the time! Like that Sumo Slammer theme park and those waterfalls on Revonnah and-’

‘I wasn’t actually asking for a list,’ Kenny interrupts, exasperated. ‘I would just like to go to a place that isn’t so obviously designed for kids.’

Father gives him a look. The one that often has Coraline darting her eyes away from, usually to the floor. ‘I fail to see how millions of years of terra-forming plotted to give rise to a geological wonder that was made primarily for young ones. My mistake. I assumed waterfalls were not the work of a conscious entity, unlike the Sumo Slammer theme parks designed by greedy companies.’

Beside him, her Dad lets out a scandalised gasp and raises his hand to his chest as though wounded. 'Is it too late to get a divorce, honey?' he asks, voice heaving with the most theatrical I'm-about-to-burst-int-crocodile-tears tone Coraline has ever heard. 'I just don't see how we can work through this...this...these irreconcilable differences in our values!'

Without even sparing him a glance, her Father pats him on the hand. 'There, there,' he says, droll and thoroughly unimpressed.

Kenny snorts. ‘You’re only that defensive because it’s Revonnah we’re talking about.’ He leans his head on the table, sliding it to the side so his eyes are glaring balefully out at them from under his ruffled hair in mock despair. ‘Whatever. One day I’ll show you all.’

Kenny's always like this, Coraline finds. Ready to run into the fray, to prove himself. To do that sort of things their Dad, and occasionally his Mum do. No matter how grounded he may find himself to be afterwards.

'He gets it from you, you know,' Kai proclaims when she comes to pick him up a few days later and finds his arms showing a significant number of bruises and scrapes. Coraline's of course, are showing none.

Eyes narrowed with the force of her anger, Kai stalks forward, the snarl overtaking her face; it even bleeds into her voice as she pokes Dad in the chest with a finger. 'That reckless streak your family encourages is going to wind up with him in the morgue, at this rate.'

Coraline doesn't think that's exactly fair, even as both Kenny and her Dad flinch; she's read some of her Dad's files, watched news clips and footage that dates back decades. Kenny, in contrast, is the poster child for caution.

...Not that that's saying much.

Kenny develops a mulish look in response to the oncoming family drama. 'Maybe if you actually taught me stuff, instead of shoving me out of the way all the time,' he mutters, just loud enough for every adult in the room to hear. 'Then this wouldn't happen.'

Kai frowns. 'I taught you Judo! I still teach you Judo! But that doesn't mean you can run round like a crazy person, like your _upstanding_ Dad-'

Coraline tunes them all out after that, especially as she sees the half-offended, half-unsure look crawling onto her Dad's face which means he wants to protest but won't, not while Kenny and her are in the room, and the bone-weary expression on Father's face at the familiar pattern developing.

Honestly, if Kenny wants to prove himself, he'll have to do it in his own time.

 

\-------------------------- 

 

And one day, of course, in another story that has already been told, he does. But Coraline does not know that. She never will. And he will never tell. Of another family that never was, of a universe where she lived in a hovel, where Lord Transyl still wrecked havoc and was still stopped, but where she was given to a different family, or perhaps even wasted wasted away on the sands of a different world. Kenny has no access to the original Plumber files on the timeline he first grows up in, and even if he did, he doubts the name 'Coraline' would ever have flashed up. What matters is that in this one, it does. 'Coraline' appears within the file, every time, bold and clear.

He sighs and logs off the screen. Pulls up her mother's file, and the 'Location currently unknown' message that flashes up.

'Lame,' he mutters and pulls away. There's no time for wondering and what-might-have-beens. No universe, no matter his altered timeline stays still for too long. Spanner is needed. And even if he isn't, Kenny will make sure he stands by, just in case.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not all rainbows and sunshine, no matter the timeline. I seem to hold true to the opinion the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who holds in the second series of the rebooted franchise when he remarks out of all the parallel worlds out there, none of them get it quite right.

**Author's Note:**

> I still find it weird how, according to certain scenes in Omniverse, you have giant purple cobwebs linking the various planets of the Anur System together. I wonder how long it takes to clamber from planet to planet? Or is it’s even feasible? Well, at the very least, given that Thep Khufans can survive the hostile conditions of space, they could manage the pilgrimage at least. Though if the distance between their planets is anything like the kilometres between the ones in our solar system, I don’t see how. But I figured perhaps I should mention that some of them try. Whether anyone ever hears anything from the ones who do afterwards is anyone’s guess. Maybe there’s some giant space spider out there, scrawling from planet to planet that feasts on those stupid enough to do so. Would explain why the cobwebs exist in the first place.
> 
> Also, the aliens Ben and Rook are working with are introduced in a comic (a Viz Media's Perfect Square publication) titled 'Ghost Ship.' They never appeared in the cartoon, despite their suspicious motivations for entering Ben's universe, so I brought them back here.


End file.
